CUSP Presents: BATTERY (Weston Olencki & Jennifer Torrence) // Aurie Hsu & Steven Kemper
Schedule
Thu, 27 Mar, 2025 at 08:00 pm
UTC-04:00Location
1433 E 33rd St, Cleveland, OH 44114-4031, United States | Cleveland, OH
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Thursday, March 27Calicchia Gallery Studio, 1433 E 33rd St Cleveland
Doors 7:30, Music 8PM
Admission: $15 suggested donation
No one will be turned away for lack of funds
BATTERY
Weston Olencki & Jennifer Torrence
BATTERY is a new long-form work for massed marching percussion. The work's setup is sculpted from the component parts of a traditional drumline, including a large collection of snares, tenors, and bass drums, two pairs of feedback-induced crash cymbals, and an array of robotic woodblocks. The work centers both the immediacy of these instruments' sonic impact and their abilities to resonate and project extreme amplitudes and their broader cultural entanglements in the complex histories of military music, imperial/colonial legacies, and rural social practices. Devised by Weston Olencki in collaboration with Jennifer Torrence, the work draws upon both musicians' early experiences and education within this ubiquitous American tradition. BATTERY imagines an alternative drum culture pushed to its algorithmic limits, using electromechanical attachments, intertwined feedback loops, and multichannel synthesis to reanimate source material from the rudiments, virtuosity, and athletic bravado of the drumline, forging new connections between musicians, listeners, and the instruments themselves.
Weston Olencki (b.1992; Spartanburg, SC) is a musician, composer, and sound artist based in Berlin, Germany. Their recent music deals with the non-linear relationships between experimental sound, geography, historicity, and (mostly American) musical traditions. They have presented work at the Borealis Festival, Issue Project Room, REDCAT, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Ghent Jazz Festival, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Black Mountain College, Musica Nova Helsinki, the American Academy in Rome, Roulette Intermedium, and Frequency Festival, among other festivals and venues.
http://www.westonolencki.com
Jennifer Torrence (b.1986; Dalton, GA) is an experimental musician based in Oslo, Norway. Her practice includes percussion/performance, artistic research, collaborative projects, curation, composition, etc. She is Associate Professor II of percussion at the Norwegian Academy of Music and a member of Pinquins. She is a curator at nyMusikk (2023-2024).
http://www.jennifertorrence.com
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Aurie Hsu & Steven Kemper
Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper will present a series of works that combine dance, robotic musical instruments, and sound. Ethereal electronics weave through the performance, blurring the boundaries between human expression and machine agency. Through this fusion of dance, electronic music, and robotics, Hsu and Kemper explore themes of embodiment, interactivity, and the evolving relationship between humans and machines.
Aurie Hsu creates interactive electronic music, often collaborating with musical robots. She performs with the Remote electroAcoustic Kinesthetic Sensing (RAKS) system, a wireless sensor interface for dance. Her pieces have been presented at NIME, ICMC, MOCO, Art Basel Miami, SEAMUS, and the Ammerman Center. Her research has been published in Leonardo Music Journal and in conference proceedings of the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, International Workshop on Movement and Computing, and the International Computer Music Conference. Aurie is currently Associate Professor of Computer Music and Digital Arts in the Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA) program at Oberlin Conservsatory where she teaches courses in electronic and interactive music, gesture and music, and sensor systems for interactive performance.
http://www.auriehsu.com
Steven Kemper is a composer, music technologist, and instrument designer. As a composer, Steven creates music for acoustic instruments, instruments and computers, musical robots, dance, and video. His compositions have been presented at numerous concerts and festivals around the world and his first solo album of electroacoustic music, Mythical Spaces, was released by Ravello Records in 2018. Steven is a co-founder of Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI), a collective dedicated to creating and composing music for robotic instruments. He also co-developed the RAKS (Remote electroAcoustic Kinesthetic Sensing) System, a wireless sensor interface designed specifically for belly dancers with composer and dancer Aurie Hsu. Steven’s research has been published in Leonardo, Leonardo Music Journal, Organised Sound, and Frontiers in Robotics and AI. Steven is currently Associate Professor of Computer Music and Digital Arts at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
https://stevenkemper.com/wp/
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Where is it happening?
1433 E 33rd St, Cleveland, OH 44114-4031, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
