Free Performance by Laetitia Sonami

Thursday, May 11, 2017

8pm

Music and Media, 218

The Beall Center for Art + Technology and the Gassman Studio present a free performance by contemporary artist, Laetitia Sonami. Also featured in the Beall Center's current exhibition, Masculine <-> Feminine (closing May 13, 2017), Laetitia Sonami will showcase her sensory, compositional, and computational work in Room 218 of the Music and Media Building at 8pm on Thursday, May 11, 2017.

Composer, performer, and sound installation artist Laetitia Sonami was born in France and settled in the United States in 1975 to pursue her interest in live electronic music. She studied with Eliane Radigue, Joel Chadabe, Robert Ashley and David Behrman. Sonami's sound performances, live-film collaborations, and sound installations focus on issues of presence and participation.  She has devised new gestural controllers for performance and applies new technologies and appropriated media to achieve an expression of immediacy through sound, place and objects. Best known for her unique instrument, the elbow-length lady's glove, (which is fitted with an array of sensors tracking the slightest motion of her hand and body) Sonami has performed worldwide and earned substantial international acclaim. Recent projects include the design of a new instrument ─ the Spring Spyre ─ based on the use and application of neural networks, an improvisation duo, Sparrows and Ortolans (with James Fei), and an upcoming sound installation, Le Corps Sonore, at the Rubin Museum (NY) in collaboration with Eliane Radigue and Bob Bielecki. Sonami has received numerous awards, including the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Award. She is a visiting faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute (Design and Technology Department), Mills College (Music) and Bard College MFA Summer program (Music).

The artist will perform two electronic music pieces with her new instrument, the Spring Spyre. Her most recent composition, "Breathing in Birds...", explores the unstable nature of the instrument. "OCCAM IX", composed for her by her mentor Eliane Radigue, grounds the instrument in subtle sonic shifts.

Admission to this event is free.

While an RSVP is not required, seating is limited - guests are encouraged to arrive by 8pm to ensure seating.

The artist will also produce two free guest lectures that are open to the public:

Wednesday May 10, 2017

"The Sonic Lens"

a presentation by Laetitia Sonami

CAC Colloquium Room, CAC 3201

4:00 pm, Free and open to all

The artist will provide an overview of her installation works and the transformation of ubiquitous objects through sounds. Sonami will also discuss the works of visual artists whose use of sounds is essential to their practice.

Thursday May 11, 2017

"Your Presence is Required"

a presentation by Laetitia Sonami

Music Collaboration Laboratory, AITR 190

1:00 pm, Free and open to all

The artist will discuss her 35 years of exploration in the electronic music arena and her search for presence through the creation of personal gestural interfaces.