Featured Artist in Residence

SOUNDBOX 7| 2024 FEATURED ARTISTS | MAY 19- MAY 21, 20234

IMPROVISATION. CREATIVE CODING. ELECTRONIC MUSIC.

CHRISTOPHER LOCK

Soundbox 7 In Residence | May 19-21, 2024

Soundbox 7 Featured Programs:

Ephemerist: Music of Impermanence, Live set of Electroacoustic Viola, May 19th 8:30 (PST)
Ableton for Live Sets: a MUSIC & Beat-based Masterclass by Christopher Lock (with OSU Students) May 21 1-2pm (PST)
Improvisations with Faculty and Students (TBC)

Christopher Lock is a computer musician, creative programmer, and film composer currently based in Cambridge, MA. He creates densely textural electronic music which slowly mutates and morphs over time and is often saturated with dark imagery or phantasmagoria. His musical practice stems from a tradition of Baltimore area noise music, where he first started experimenting with sound.

Throughout his education Christopher has been fortunate to study with such musical visionaries as Esperanza Spalding, Meredith Monk, Vijay Iyer, Claire Chase, Thomas Dolby, Chaya Czernowin, Hans Tutschku.

Christopher has released his music on labels such as Geryon (NYC) and Idolatrous Records (Cambridge). He has worked with world renowned ensembles such as Ensemble Recherche, Tak Ensemble, Ensemble WasteLAnd, Switch~ Ensemble, Elision Ensemble, Line Upon Line, and Wet Ink.

In the spring of 2022 Christopher was the appointed Teaching Fellow for Esperanza Spalding’s Songwright's Apothecary Lab at Harvard University where he worked with Prof. Spalding and the students intimately during the semester to develop a concert program of new original works.

Christopher is an active composer of film music and has worked with artists such as Ezekiel Goodman (I Know What You Did Last Summer) and Robert Eng (Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, Corroline). In January of 2022 Christopher composed original music for Giovanna Molina's Deer Girl which was an official selection for the Sundance Institute's Ignite x Adobe Fellowship.

In the summer of 2019 his audio/visual work, in collaboration with his grandmother (also called Chris Lock), was screened at the Venice Biennale from May 8th to June 4th. The video was projected in the Palazzo Pesaro Papafava as part of the UK's Alive In The Universe project.

Christopher is currently a Ph.D candidate in Music (with supporting courses in Computer Science) at Harvard University. He holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Music from Harvard, a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Music from Johns Hopkins University (Peabody Conservatory), and a second Bachelor's degree in viola performance (also from Hopkins).

Guest Presenters & Artists

SOUNDBOX 7

Sasha Petrenko & ART 331

STOMP, STOMP, STOMP

Western Washington University

Over the last 4 weeks 19 Western Washington University students, enrolled in Wood Sculpture, constructed wooden sound boxes and stomp boxes, electro-acoustic instruments of their own design and making. Each box is outfitted with a trashy array of springs, hooks, strings and prongs, and wired for sound with cheap piezo mics to be amplified through a tasty fleet of guitar effects pedals. Their live performance will be collaborative and experimental. It will never be the same again.

Artists include: Sofia Aria, Matt Barry, Becca Bertrand, Inez Chiapella, Allison Conner, Emma Duvien, Molly Ellis, Noah Gray, Joie Hackney, Sage Hartman, Natasha Karkoski, Ian Kolar, Sofia Lazzaro, Chase Munsey, Kelsi Nosal, Felix Park, Tayo Sjoberg-Jamison, Cam Stewart, Sofia Witzel

Professor Sasha Petrenko

Teaching Assistant Keely Sandoz

Senior Technician Doug Loewen

Audio Postcard Exhibition

Boudina McConnachie (Rhodes University, South Africa) and Francesca Porri (SAIAB)

What is an Audio Postcard Exhibition?

Using headphones for sound and screens for visuals, the Audio Postcard Exhibition is a digital sound-scape. Listening through over 20 sound offerings, contextualised by a single image, the journey takes approximately 25 minutes to complete. ‘Hearing’ the IMIsEE project offers a new experience for both researchers and audiences to rethink ways of disseminating research, which offers a neutral ground for deeper reflection. Building upon centuries of cultural and biological co-evolution, Indigenous peoples and local communities have harnessed numerous nature-based innovations to tackle habitat-related challenges. These solutions, which mimic the structure and function of natural ecosystems, combined with real problems relating to the degeneration of the rocky ocean shores of South Africa led to the implementation and development of the Indigenous Marine Innovations for Sustainable Environments and Economies (IMIsEE) project.

As an on-going project we collectively ask a fundamental question: How can we each sustainably contribute towards regenerating the degraded coastlines in our region?

This research is shared between the Rhodes University Department of Music and Musicology, the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB), and the Keiskamma Trust (KKT) all in South Africa. Strong partnerships with the International Library of African Music (ILAM), with support from South African colleagues at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Nelson Mandela University (NMU) as well as participation of privately- and state-owned regional maritime enterprises provide transdisciplinary support. Indigenous Marine Innovations for Sustainable Environments and Economies (IMIsEE) project Principal Investigators: Boudina McConnachie (RU) and Francesca Porri (SAIAB)

Boudina McConnachie is an African musical arts activist with a particular interest in indigenous musical arts pedagogy and ecomusicology and uses sound as an educational tool. HOD of the Department of Music and Musicology at Rhodes University, Dr McConnachie teaches applied ethnomusicology, research ethics and practical music contextualization. She coordinates various music education courses through the Rhodes University Education department and is integrally involved in the teaching and learning programme at the International Library of African Music (ILAM). Dr McConnachie is part of various transdisciplinary research projects which link pracademics, community researchers and engaged scholars where she focuses on knowledge dissemination via

sonic routes.

Francesca Porri is a senior scientist at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB) in Grahamstown/Makhanda, South Africa, who specialises in studying the ecology of coastal systems. With a background in marine ecology and experimental design, she specialises in investigating how organisms respond to their environment and by examining the connectivity of coastal populations across various ecosystems, including rocky shores,

sandy beaches, estuaries, mangroves as well as urbanised shorelines. Prof. Porri collaborates with postgraduates and other researchers, fostering interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary connections within fields such as oceanography, physiology, ichthyology, genetics, theoretical ecology, indigenous knowledge, modelling, arts, and education.

Todd Sickafoose

While working on the soundtrack for “Time to 1.5,” Sickafoose became fascinated with the Keeling Curve, a graph representing the amount of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere. He wanted to create a way for this data to be engaged with experientially, which resulted in “Carbon in the Age of Sapiens” (working title), a 24-hour long piece of music that encapsulates 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 data and other geologically and anthropologically significant events. Over the course of 24 hours, the human impact on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere can be heard as a breathtaking gesture in the last 11 seconds of the piece.This trio plays along with the great acceleration of the last 30 minutes.

Todd Sickafoose is a Tony and Grammy award-winning composer, producer, arranger, orchestrator, bandleader and double bassist. He has performed on hundreds of recordings, toured internationally, appeared at music venues and festivals from Carnegie Hall to New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and played on national television and radio programs including the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Show with Conan O’Brien, The Artists Den, and NPR’s Mountain Stage. Known as a musical cross-breeder who stretches across genres, Sickafoose has been described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a captivating improviser, imaginative composer, and master of collaboration”.

The midwestern VERY BAD ART SHOW!!!

Lorelei d’Andriole and Lex Leto

The midwestern VERY BAD ART SHOW!!! is an expanded video performance by Lorelei d’Andriole, Assistant Professor, Electronic Art & Intermedia, MSU Department of Art, Art History, and Design, and Lex Leto, musician and digital media artist. The pair began collaborating while in graduate school at the University of Iowa, performing together in the University of Iowa Visual Arts Building for Lorelei’s master’s thesis, Spacetime Spacelime. Both have been involved in experimental music and diy art practices for well over a decade. The duo values concept over facility, pranks over performance. Their most recent performance of this work was described by a participant as “less of a performance and more of a bunch of friends laughing together.” Two queer and trans musicians, the two do not see the word “bad” as a moral prescription, but instead as an impetus to play, an indication to create something beautiful.