Invisible Music
Brass, nautical plywood, housepaint, electronics, sound.
Invisible Music is an installation of floating sonic sculptures that play an 12 channel musical composition, bringing together content from Eric Satie’s Furniture Music, field recordings from the Texas Gulf Coast, and 1980s ambient music.
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Sonic Meditation for Solo Performer No. 2
Salvaged brass, electronics, astroturf, EEG brain monitor, video projection
A constellation of instruments that play a musical composition using brain waves. The work invites a viewer to read a silent meditation while wearing an EEG headset, where the data is translated into a 16 channel composition that is played through the suspended instruments above.
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Fanfare
Steel, copper, brass.
6’x6’x18’
Modeled after obsolete acoustic locators of the 1930s, Fanfare is made from reclaimed and repurposed brass instruments and copper tubing. Rather than produce music, the sculpture invites the viewer to engage in the simple act of focused listening.
GOLEM
Sculpture Month Houston 2023, curated by Volker Eisele, Silos at Sawyer Yards. Photos by Paul Hester.
THE GOLEM is a project that uses puppetry, automata, electronics, and sound to retell fragments of the ancient Hebrew legend of the same name. The project explores themes of hubris, power, and free-will to reflect upon ethical considerations of artificial intelligence.
In the original Golem myth from Jewish folklore, the story revolves around Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, also known as the Maharal of Prague, who created a Golem out of clay to protect the Jewish community from anti-Semitic threats and violence in 16th-century Prague. To bring the Golem to life, the Rabbi inscribed the Hebrew word "emet" (truth) on its forehead, imbuing it with strength and power. The Golem became increasingly uncontrollable and posed a threat to the people it was intended to defend.
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Winter Verse
Commissioned by the Blanton Museum of Art
Salvaged brass, copper, speakers, audio
This installation plays a contemplative musical composition made from audio samples of bells, footsteps in snow, and fragments of a liturgical chant by 12th c. abess Hildegard von Bingen, performed by the artist.
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Sonic Meditation for Solo Performer No. 1 (for Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Lucier)
Salvaged brass, electronics, astroturf, EEG brain monitor, video projection
A constellation of salvaged marching band instruments that plays a musical composition made from the brainwaves of a single viewer. The viewer wears an EEG brain monitor and reads a series of silent meditations. The viewer’s brain activity is then translated, via custom Max/MSP patch, into a 16 part musical composition that is played through the instruments hanging above.
Video here
The Eyes of Texas are Upon You (FIGHT SONG)
Prepared vinyl record of The Eyes of Texas, plastic football figurines, confederate soldiers, books, speakers, pennies, pom-poms, sound
4’x4’x3’
Silent Meditation for Marching Band
This is a work that features an NCAA marching band performing a silent meditation at the Alamodome that draws from Pauline Oliveros compassionate listening practices and John Cage’s notions of “silence”. The project reimagines the marching band away from its connections to traditionally aggressive domains – including warfare and football — and transforming it into a tool for sonic meditation.
Foghorn Elegy (2021)
Salvaged brass, hazard lights, steel, electronics, wood, acrylic paint, audio samples of brass instruments, copper plumbing.
Commissioned by The Contemporary Austin with funds provided by the Edward and Betty Marcus Foundation.
This work pays homage to disappearing and defunct methods of seafaring communication, such as signal flags, steam-powered foghorns, conch shells, bells operated by horses, cannons, and rifles. Produced from salvaged marching band equipment, the foghorn-like sculptures emit an eleven-track audio soundscape recorded on brass instruments in Parker’s garage. Facing its radio tower counterparts across the lagoon, the sculpture encourages viewer to listen deliberately, not unlike the experience of putting an ear up to a shell to “hear” the sea.
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Death Rattle (2021)
Carboard, speakers, wires, paper, audio.
A series of cardboard anatomical votives embedded with speakers extracted from broken electronic devices. The speakers play samples of body processes recorded at the beginning and the end of life.
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Kyrie, eleison (2020)
Reclaimed organ pipes, copper plumbing, vinyl tubing, fireplace bellows.
A musical instrument sculpture that facilitates a sonic ritual for up to seven people.
Self Portrait (2020)
Vinyl, plastic lids, proximity sensors, recorded audio, and wires
Self Portrait is a mural that merges graphic notation with the functionality of the theremin. The mural is played by moving one’s hands across the wall to trigger audio samples of tongue clicks, muttering, whispers, and other guttural sounds that are played through speaker drivers that protrude from the mural.
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Ghost Box (2018)
Salvaged brass, tactical maps, scores on paper, wires, map pins, electronics, audio, instrument case. 19’x8’x6”
Ghost Box is a playable sound sculpture modeled after a WWII era short wave radio. When touched, the sculpture plays different looped audio clips of coded transmissions, including Morse Code, spirituals, the Hebrew Shofar, and the Iron Age Celtic carnyx. Embedded into the sound sculpture are a series of musical scores on paper that incorporate maps and icons of the WWII Ghost Army, the functional wires of the attached electronics, and map pins.
A ghost box is a communication tool used by paranormal investigators to speak to the dead. Typically, a ghost box is a modified portable AM/FM radio that continously scans the band. It is believed to create white noise and audio remnants from broadcast stations that entities are able to manipulate to create words and even entire sentences.
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ASMR Étude #1
2018, Brass, plastic, copper, speakers, and recorded voices. Dimensions vary.
This is a musical composition that is realized by a viewer utilizing a wearable acoustic locator. Each speaker on the wall plays samples of ASMR (Auto Sensory Meridian Response), an experience characterized by a static-like or tingling sensation on the skin triggered by specific auditory phenomenon. ASMR is sometimes used to treat anxiety, PTSD, and insomnia.
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Sirens
Brass, plastic, conduit, and recorded voices. 7’x4’x4’.
This sculpture reimagines the function of the contemporary civil defense siren. Rather than projecting conventional warning tones, Sirens plays intermittent recordings of songs of distress as a call to action.
Civil defense sirens are used to provide warnings of approaching danger and to indicate when danger has passed. Sirens were initially designed to warn citizens of air raids in World War II, but many are no longer operational. In Greek mythology, the Sirens were dangerous creatures who lured nearby sailors with enchanting music to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island.
Featuring the voices of Kate Bass, Laura Esparza, Michael Anthony García, Heloise Gold, Katelena Hernandez Cowles, Jebney Lewis, Alex Keller, Andrea Mellard, Anjali Niyogi, Jason Phelps, Oliver Scales, Julie Slim, and Sara Vanderbeek.
Video here
Bluescycle
Brass, steel, rubber, aluminum. 14’x10’x8’
The Bluescycle is an interactive, musical bicycle that can be played by people of all ages and abilities. The sculpture is outfitted with a range of bike horns and wheels that play a variety of blues riffs and patterns.
The sculpture is intended to honor the legacy of two prominent Black composers with ties to central Arkansas: William Grant Still and Florence Price. Both composers utilized the blues language in novel ways, in works such as the Afro-American Symphony, the Mississippi River Suite, and the Suite of Dances. The Bluecycle also examines the politics of bicycle transportation, such as its role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades, in urban planning, and social activism.
BAT // MAN
A ritual performance that examines how living creatures navigate space and memory using sound.
This project was created in a series of public workshops with students from Anthropos Arts and Austin Soundwaves, culminating in a performance that featured a live audio feed of 1.5 million Mexican Free-Tailed bats (who live under the Congress Street bridge), a conch shell ensemble, a community megaphone choir, garden hose consort, and handmade echolocation devices, modeled after Alvin Lucier's SONDOLS.