Friday, February 13, 2009 @ 8:30 pm &
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 @ 11:30 pm

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PLOrk (a rough acronym for Princeton Laptop Orchestra) is a new ensemble directed by Dan Trueman and Perry Cook, professors at Princeton University who both have extensive careers in both musical and computer programming. PLOrk is 15 musicians whose instruments are laptop computers. Each player sits on a pillow surrounded by a 6-channel hemispherical speaker and a variety of control devices. State of the Arts producer Eric Schultz recorded one of PLOrk’s premiere performances, which included works by Paul Lansky, Brad Garton, Curtis Bahn and Tomie Hahn, Dan Trueman, Scott Smallwood, Seth Cluett, Perry Cook and Ge Wang, with special guest performances by renowned tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, accordian legend Pauline Oliveros, and the hot percussion quartet So Percussion (who processed Hussain in real-time). Schultz also visits some of the musicians in class at Princeton University.

• also visit
  plork.cs.princeton.edu

PLOrk Performance at Richardson Auditorium, April 2006

PLOrk Performance at Richardson Auditorium, April 2006

An exhibit at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck, New Jersey mixed bugs, paint, blood, and toxins. The show, “Alchemie de la Douleur” (May 6-June 24, 2006) featured works by eco-artist Brandon Ballengée including one of his signature outdoor black-light sculptures. Titled “The Love Motel,” it’s a temporary installation created in part by bugs attracted to the light, mating and feeding on the sculpture which is thus “painted” with the bugs’ chemical pheromones. Ballengée first created the black-light structure with students from the Nathaniel Hawthorne School in Teaneck. Later that evening, the community assembled for a lecture and the “turning on” of the sculpture for the bugs. State of the Arts producer Susan Wallner was on hand to witness this primordial convergence of art, technology, and nature. Ballengée has been interested in both art and biology since he was a teenager, and he continues to be directly involved in field research and ecological activism. His artwork consists of photographs and biological samples of the creatures he collects, such as “Mermaids With Unknown Illness” in which he created incredibly detailed scans of deformed amphibians from Western New York State. Also featured in the story is a walk through the adjacent Teaneck Creek Conservancy Park, which opened to the public on May 7, 2006.

• also visit
  www.teaneckcreek.org
  www.puffinfoundation.org

Two artists collaborated to combine abstract painting with high-powered computer animation in “Path of Cosmologies & Technology,” an exhibit at the Noyes Museum in Oceanville, New Jersey (May 13-September 3, 2006). Collingswood-based artist Antonio Puri creates large-scale paintings of a spiritual nature. Puri is inspired in part by a childhood spent near the Himalayan mountain range where he first experimented with traditional mediums like clay, woodcarving and batik. Cherry Hill artist LiQin Tan has a successful career that includes working as an animator for Disney and founding Painter Magazine in his native China. He now teaches in the Electronic Art program at Rutgers University, Camden and specializes in 3-D computer animation. As State of the Arts producer Christopher Benincasa discovered, when these two unlikely artists put their work together – using laptops, video projectors and lots of canvas – the result was a show that appears to be teeming with life – or at least artificial intelligence.

Watch more of LiQin Tan’s animation
Dance Queen
Flower Fire
Flower Water

• also visit
  www.antoniopuri.com
  www.tanimation.net
  www.noyesmuseum.org

“Melting Pot”
painting by Antonio Puri

“Digital Dancing”
animated projection by LiQin Tan

“Burl Hair Red” by LiQin Tan

The Boston Symphony Orchestra was wired for a concert in 2006, but it wasn’t just nerves. Protruding from a jersey-like jacket worn by conductor Keith Lockhart was a bundle of wires and sensors. Five orchestra members wore the same outfit, and nearly 50 members of the audience manipulated handheld devices. It’s not a new, interactive video-game—although it could be someday. The jackets and sensors were designed by Dr. Teresa M. Nakra, Assistant Professor of Music at The College of New Jersey, graduate of MIT’s Media Lab, and founder of Immersion Music, Inc. The musicians and audience were wired to better understand how our brains and bodies are wired to respond to music. By measuring physiological changes during music-making and listening, the experiment is meant to uncover the nature of our emotional responses to music and how much of a common experience we share. What does a conductor feel as he conducts the Finale to Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony? Is he able to communicate his feelings to the players, and do they show similar responses? And does the audience have the same emotional experience? Does music really express emotion at all? State of the Arts visits Dr. Nakra for a demonstration of the technology of her sensory clothing. Also interviewed is Dr. Philip Tate, Conductor and Assistant Professor of Music at The College of New Jersey, who reflects on the emotional experience of music.

• also visit
  Immersion Music
  www.immersionmusic.org
  The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology
  www.music.mcgill.ca/mmt

Pianist, Christina Merwitz,
is wired for her vital signs

Dr. Teresa M. Nakra, founder of Immersion Music, Inc