Other Rooms

“Quatre Couches” is a sonic trifle, tiramisu, or mille-feuille – juxtaposing four contrasting layers and toying with them, mixing them and moving them around on the plate until they all melt away. “Flare Stains” is a sonic poem on the residue left by emergency flares. “Typewriter” uses voice, processing and typewriter samples (triggered with a gesture controller). “Declaratives” combines live and sampled text fragments, which are further fragmented and layered through delay and granulation processes. The text samples were originally created for a six-channel sound installation in an exhibition called “The Art of Artist Statement”. In “Badagada”, one of my early digital delay pieces, the syllables “ba-da-ga-da-ga-da-ga-da-ga” are layered in multiple delay lines to form a harmonic, rhythmic accompaniment to a melody sung in English. “Syrinx” is named for the avian vocal organ. In this little extract from my longer 2004 sound work, a birdsong is pitch-shifted and consequently stretched until its individual notes are slow enough and low enough to be accurately produced by a human voice. “Flock”, which incorporates the sampled voice of dancer Jesse Zaritt, is a structured improvisational meditation on the curious naming of groups of birds. “Sixteen Actions” is a work involving live video capture and gesture-controlled audio and video samples. 

“La Vapeur” is a bit of sonic and visual exploration inspired by a flume of steam from a pipe seen through the window of a gallery at MoMA in New York. “Breathing” is a solo version of a movement from a 2013 multi-media chamber work called “Carbon Song Cycle”. “Le Corps” is woven from layered samples of French choreographer Christine Bonansea’s speaking voice, which are played using a gesture-controlled MIDI instrument. “Unknown Person” is an excerpt from “Baggage Allowance”, an intermedia work that scans and inventories the belongings (and memories) we all cart around. “Other Rooms” is constructed from samples of the speaking voice of American playwright Paul David Young, taken from an interview I recorded for my performance work “Memory Trace”. “Scared Song” is a work by Meredith Monk from her 1987 album “Do You Be”. The performance in Berlin is my live version of the studio arrangement I made for my track on her 2012 tribute CD “Monk Mix”.

– Pamela Z