Projects

"Four Movements" is a music album constructed in video game space. The project consists of several navigable environments (an empty club, a loft residence, an 'open world' intersected with a modernist grid, etc.) where the virtual participant can perform listening.

While this project predates COVID-19, the pandemic highlighted our reliance on virtual rooms to supplant our empty social spaces. "Four Movements" creatively embodies this disjuncture.

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Considering the history of the music album as a medium, the ‘record’ shifted from being a recording of an event to a construction of that performance (ie. “Sgt Pepper”). A huge portion of the ‘recording’ is the presentation of sonic events in a fabricated space (plate reverbs, convolution reverbs, stereo ‘imaging’, etc.). This interweaving of the real and the media construction largely defines our contemporary condition. "Four Movements" is a continuation of this trajectory of artists building artificial spatialized ’soundstages’ for sonic experiences.

Initially conceived as the media distribution of my previous installation/performance work, "Four Movements" evolved into something more complex, picking up on numerous themes including modern isolation as computer media supplants human interaction (further highlighted by the coronavirus pandemic).

This project also highlights intersections between this medium and discourses around cinema, architecture, etc.. For example, the grid space of game space is taken to logical extremes with gestures towards the Italian dystopian architects Superstudio. Or in one scene, the viewer can cross a loft apartment to watch Michael Snow's "Wavelength" on a television across the room (certainly offending the structuralist film purists).

This project was supported by a NY State MAAF grant as well as direct technical support while in a technology arts residency at Pioneer Works.

Website devoted to this project:
"Four Movements" website

Download the project from itch.io:
"Four Movements" on itch.io