documentation

 

]]] recent activities [[[

 

DECODING THE SONIC XENOMORPH

Presentation at Tuning Speculation VI: Auscultations | Occultations, Listening to the Occult (Nov 2-4 2018, Bloomington IN)

 

ART + MUSIC + TECHNOLOGY PODCAST: EPISODE 249

Darwin Grosse’s “Art + Music + Technology” Podcast #249 features author/prof/sci-fi music aficionado Trace Reddell

 

]]] publications [[[

Sonic Science Fiction

The Sound of Things to Come: An Audible History of the Science Fiction Film | University of Minnesota Press, 2018
A groundbreaking approach to sound in sci-fi films offers new ways of construing both sonic innovation and science fiction cinema.

Cover Page
"Ethnoforgery & Outsider Afrofuturism"
Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture
ISSUE 5(2): SPECIAL ISSUE ON AFROFUTURISM
Guest edited by tobias c. van Veen
:: feat. Mark Fisher, Trace Reddell, Graham St John, Nabeel Zuberi,
Reynaldo Anderson, DJ Spooky, Ytasha L. Womack ::

 

]]] live audiovisual [[[

 

Lafayette Electronic Arts Festival

 

Linguistic Programming of Sonic Psychotechnologies

An audiovisual performance of sonic science fiction | Lafayette Electronic Arts Festival, April 27, 2018

Through a combination of spoken word, sound and visual synthesis, and remixing, the performance tracks science fictional word play and formal experiment from texts to the sonic innovations of films. Some literary and film history, some theory, and some original fictive elements will converge with new soundscapes and alien broadcasts. Reddell’s instruments are sonic psychotechnologies that exploit the entwined nature of psychic and cinematic apparatuses while drawing on science fiction’s capacity for cognitive estrangement – literally taking us out of our minds. As a work of science fiction in its own right, the performance shifts the emphasis on the “new” in science fiction from history, utopia/dystopia, and analogy toward other states of consciousness and new modes of being in the world. The goal of this exploration of inner/outer space is to document the patterns of sonic and material hybridization that characterize the language and other sonorous objects of science fiction.

 

The Remediation of Olaus Wormius

Lovecraftian lunar horror in a live audiovisual performance for laptop, spoken word, and synthesizer. Premiere performance at "The Passage of Light Can Be Bent," Counterpath, Denver, CO, on October 27, 2017.


BLOrk

Live Visual Performance in support of Boulder Laptop Orchestra + jazz ensemble performing selections from Sun Ra (2014) and the electronic jazz-rock fusion of Miles Davis (2011), ATLAS Black Box Theater, CU-Boulder.

Boulder Laptop Orchestra plays Sun Ra (March 1, 2014)

SunRa BLOrk


photos: Ira G. Liss

Boulder Laptop Orchestra plays Electric Miles Davis (February 25-26, 2011)

 

FullDome Festival 2010

international fulldome celebration
4-8 May 2010, Zeiss-Planetarium Jena

Zeiss machine at the Goethe Gallerie, Jena, Germany

The Optische Museum, Jena, Germany

 

Sonic Acts XIII: The Poetics of Space

spatial explorations in art, science, music and technology
25-28 February 2010, Amsterdam

Cyborg Ritual and Sentic Technology in the Vortex Concerts

I presented the Vortex Concerts of Henry Jacobs and Jordan Belson, which took place at San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium between 1957 and 1959, as extensions of astronautic research and cybernetic space sciences. While considering the audiovisual content and new performance interfaces used by these artists, I am most interested in how this space age ‘theater of the future’ plays out a cosmological agenda. The unique spatial structure of the planetarium dome represents the near atmosphere and distant outer space, but it also mimics the observatory and even the cramped interiors of spacecraft. Through this vehicular mechanism, the Vortex Concerts promote a new understanding of the nexus of mind, mood, and body as these are integrated into highly technical cybernetic systems by means of bio-engineering and pharmaceutical regimes. These performances facilitate the emotional life and imaginative health of the cyborg-astronaut through ritual use of sense-altering technologies.