Saturdays
February 3, 10, 17 & 24
6 pm - midnight
Under Your Breath
Angry When You Sleep
two sound installations, by
Olivia Block
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NOTES:
Using both of Diapason's exhibition spaces, Block explores the nature of location and movement through the use of sound in Under Your Breath, and Angry When You Sleep.
In the main space, fragments of incidental atmospheric sounds collected from field recordings, at times barely audible, serve to create an ambiguous and shifting aural location. These sounds emerge and recede from veils of white noise, as if from the speakers' hiss, or the listener's breath.
In Diapason's smaller enclosed room, sound layers created from recordings of dried leaves, beans and other objects in a metal pan fall and swirl centripetally, locating the listener at the center of a visceral maelstrom of sound.
BIO:
OLIVIA BLOCK is a contemporary composer and sound artist who combines field recordings, scored segments for acoustic instruments, and electronically generated sound. Her recorded work seeks to introduce, set at play, and ultimately reconcile nature with artifice in the realms of music and sound. In the process, "organic" sound becomes subtly processed, digitized and abstracted; "inorganic" sound becomes self-replicating and animate; and "musical" elements such as chamber instruments are de-familiarized from their traditional associations, freeing them to participate in the larger aesthetic possibilities of sound.
Her trilogy of recorded solo compositions, which includes Pure Gaze (Sedimental, 1998), Mobius Fuse (Sedimental, 2001), and most recently Change Ringing (cut 2005), has garnered national critical acclaim. Julian Cowley of The Wire described her as "a composer who demands serious attention." Pitchfork Media called Mobius Fuse one of the best CDs of the 1990s. Each of the three releases has been included on several Ōtop releases of the yearÕ lists. She has also received favorable attention for her collaborative compositions. BlockÕs latest solo recording, Heave To (Sedimental, 2006), was lauded by critic Peter Margasak as "a new apex" in her work.
Olivia consistently performs in festivals and tours throughout Europe, America, and Japan, including Dissonanze, and Angelica (Italy), Sonic Light (Netherlands), London Musicians Collective music festival, Archipel (Switzerland), and many others. She has recently completed a stint as 2006 composer-in-residence at Mills College in Oakland, CA, presenting works for two large ensembles and wind sextet. In live situations, she often works with musicians who play both scored and improvised material while Block accompanies the musicians with electronics. Recently her solo performances have featured the use of prepared piano and electronics. Block has expanded her work to include video, which she occasionally includes in her live work, accompanying images with live textural sounds including amplified natural objects, and acoustic instruments. She also composes larger works for new music and chamber ensembles. Improvisers and composers she works with include Kyle Bruckmann, Ernst Karel, Jeb Bishop, Seth Nehil, and John Grzinich among numerous others.
Block has created sound installations for public sites and exhibitions spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Betty Rhymer Gallery at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Lincoln Conservatory Fern Room in Chicago, and most recently, one of her speaker installations has been included in the "Echoes Through the Mountains" exhibit at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Her sound installations are created for multiple speakers, and are designed specifically for each exhibition space or public site. In public spaces her installations are often intended to augment the existing sound environment. Feature articles and interviews have been published about her in The Chicago Reader, The Chicago Tribune, Blow Up magazine, The Sound Projector, and in Internet publications such as PerfectSoundForever.com., and others.
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