Prismatic Listening with JesterN
| Date start | 04.24.24 |
| Date end | 04.25.24 |
| Start Time | 6pm |
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| Admission | Suggested Donation $10 |
| Event artist | |
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The Museum of Human Achievement will be transformed into a musical instrument where the location in the gallery will determine what the performers and audience hear. The audience will move through the space in order to hear the instrument from their personal perspective. In this installation we will be having people wear binaural headsets that will trigger the lasar art of JesterN. So that along with hearing the space a visual representation of ones own personal perspective will be projected.
Concept, composition by Bob Hoffnar with Max Lorenzen and JesterN (Italy)
Bob Hoffnar will be interacting with the standing waves by playing the pedalsteel guitar. JesterN will be activating the lasars and the space will be tuned and actuated by Max Lorenzen.
Bob Hoffnar
Pedal steel guitarist Bob Hoffnar relocated to Austin from NYC in 2009 and has since become a major contributor to Austin’s cultural landscape. Originally from Silver Springs, Maryland, Hoffnar graduated from Purchase Conservatory of Music in 1998 with a BFA in Composition that included private studies with Richard Cameron Wolf. Further private studies included time with such musical luminaries as Lamonte Young, Pandit Pran Nath, and Ernest Tubb’s steel player Buddy Charleton. Bob currently runs Liminal Sound Series — a live concert performance series dedicated to the commissioning of new works and collaborations between visionary composers and Austin-based musicians and performers.
Recent Commissions:
- Soundtrack for Buster Keaton’s “My Wife's Relations” performed live at the Paramount Theater Austin, TX
- Music for Stuart Hyatt’s “Field Works, Glen Rose Formation”
- “Mr Salamander #3”, using the Hayward Tuning Vine
- Soundtrack for Edison’s Frankenstein performed live at The Blanton Museum Austin, TX
Current ongoing collaborations and projects include:
- Improvisations with Janie Cowan
- Composer Robin Hayward (Berlin)
- Spatial Prismatic Active Listening: a sound sculpture system developed with Max Lorenzen - Projects, workshops and new commissions at Princeton University, 2020
Max Lorenzen
Max Lorenzen is an audio engineer in Lockhart, TX where he runs the mixing and mastering studio, Rare Ear. Originally from Summersville, West Virginia, he graduated from American University in 2009 with a BA in Audio Production. Since moving to Central Texas in 2013, Max has become a fixture in the Austin recording community. Engineering alongside producers Danny Reisch, Jim Eno, Steve Berlin, David Boyle, Chico Jones and Bob Hoffnar. His engineering, mixing, and mastering credits span across genres which include recordings by Brown Whörnet, Christeene, Tele Novella, The Octopus Project, Star Parks, Shearwater, Spoon, Marmalakes, Mike and the Moonpies, and Pure X. Max also produces experimental electronic music as Max Religion
JesterN
- _Weapons of Visual Mass Distraction_
- _Tools from the Past for the Aesthetic of the Future_
- _simultaneous analog translation of sound into light and light into sound_
ARTISTIC PRACTICE
JesterN’s practice repurposes found or decontextualised analogue devices to investigate the connections between light and sound in the form of contemplative installations and performances. He repairs and modifies tools from our analogue past: oscilloscopes, early game consoles, analogue video mixers, and lasers. He is attracted to their intrinsic limitations and strong ‘personalities’: fluid beam movement, vivid colors, infinite resolution, absence of frame rate, and line aesthetics. By using these forgotten devices, he exposes the public to the aesthetic differences between the ubiquitous digital projections and the vibrance of analogue beams, engaging them to reflect on the sociopolitical impact of technology in a retrospective on technologisation: what ‘old’ means, and what value the ‘new’ really adds.
ARTISTIC ACTIVITY
His productions in form of performances, talks, papers and compositions have been presented at Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museo Reina Sofia Madrid, Ars Electronica Linz, Amsterdam Dance Event, Venice Biennale, National Art Museo of Lima, New York Computer Music Festival, Bozar Bruxelles, BOA Biennale Porto, Rewire Festival Den Haag, Glasgow Contemporary Art Center, National Art Museum Buenos Aires, Dom Moskow, Seoul International Music Festival, Imagen Festival Colombia, Rome University of Fine Arts, to mention a few. He has released records for Staalplat, Bowindo, Elli Records, Dobialabel, Setoladimaiale, Ante-Rasa and Creative Sources.
COMPETENCES
He graduated in Nuclear Physics at the University of Trieste, completed the master Art Science Technologies with Jean Claude Risset, obtained a PhD degree at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven with Armin Kohlrausch, and graduated in Electronic Music at the Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatory of Den Haag. He worked for Texas Instruments, Philips Research, and Auro Technologies creating software for their audio applications.
NETWORK
He has assisted Alvin Lucier, David Behrman, Nicholas Collins and Trevor Wishart. He has improvised with Evan Parker, Butch Morris, Karl Berger, Rob Mazurek and Tristan Honsinger. He was invited professor at Sussex University, MICA Baltimore, SAIC Chicago, Tallin University, Den Haag Conservatory, Turin Conservatory, IEM Graz, Champaign-Urbana University, CMMAS Mexico among others.
AWARDS
- Price CIME 2023 – International Competition of Electroacoustic Music, category Sound Art, New Interfaces.
- Landscape Price 2023 by Zeugma.
- Excellence Awards 2020 at the 5th Shanghai Digital Creation, Innovation & Entrepreneurship International Competition – New Media Art Section.
- Price Destellos 2014 – International electroacoustic music competition.
