Jacob Richman PAT Application

JACOB RICHMAN – MULTIMEDIA ARTIST

APPLICATION FOR ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF PERFORMING ARTS TECHNOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

CREATIVE WORK DOCUMENTATION

(all images, sounds, and music by Jacob Richman unless otherwise noted,
video and other further documentation available at linked pages)

1. The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery (2012)
large-scale multimedia performance and installation piece, 13 performers, video projection, audio/video/data processing (Arduino and Max/MSP/Jitter protocols) cloth, motors, electronics

The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery is an evening-length, multimedia performance piece based on a Rhode Island murder story from 1990. It is a performance setting of fragmented details of this tragic event for four dancers, nine musicians, and multiple interactive multimedia installations staged in various rooms of a five-story church in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. It is a “roving performance” in which the audience and performers freely move between installation spaces and performance scenes scattered throughout the building.

2. Windeye (2016)
fixed-media piece for violin and video, to also be developed into multimedia performance involving video projections, cloth, physical computing

Windeye is a setting of a short story by author Brian Evenson for video and solo violinist/vocalist. Through her performance, we are presented with the fading and distorted childhood memory of a sister who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The piece was commissioned by NYC-based violinist and vocalist Andie Tanning Springer.

3. Meridian Project (on-going collaboration)
multimedia performance and science collaboration, music composition/performance, video projections

Meridian Project is an ongoing collaboration between musicians, visual artists, and scientists whose goal is to present topics of cosmology, astronomy, and astrophysics in unique audio-visual performances that blend the scientific concepts with new music and imagery in a way that is informative, engaging, and fun. Our performances take place in locations that reflect this mix of science, art, and wonder. These include planetariums, observatories, and outdoors under the stars.

My role in the collaboration is as co-composer, musician, and producer of various video content and experimental projections based on the performance venue.

4. Three Scenes from Fox Point (2011)
Fixed-media HD video, with 5-channel surround audio

An exploration of the relationship between images, sounds, textures and characters found in three locations at Fox Point in Providence, RI.

5. the infinite space between (2011)
performance piece, 6 musicians, 2 dancers, movement-responsive video and audio manipulation (Max/MSP/Jitter protocol)

A collaborative media and performance piece for two singers, alto flute, bass clarinet, trombone, percussion, and movement in a building-turned-instrument. My role was to create a responsive audio/visual system that used computer vision to measure movement and spatial relationships between dancers performing in the piece, and used that data to affect sounds and images projected elsewhere in the space.

commissioned by the 2011 Music in Architecture Architecture in Music Symposium
University of Texas at Austin, Fine Arts Center

6. Speak, Stone (2003/2011)
Fixed-media video

A non-fiction video about Canto a Tenores folksinging as well as the people, animals and landscape in and around the town of Bitti, Sardinia. Featuring the Tenores di Bitti “Mialinu Pira.”

Made possible through a grant from the Dunwalke Foundation.

7. Pretty Polly (2008)
multimedia performance piece for solo double bass/voice and live-processed video (Max/MSP/Jitter Protocol)

Pretty Polly is a multimedia setting of a murder ballad that traces its history back through the American bluegrass repertoire to England/Scotland. Although the song has been sung to many melodies over the decades, the stark brutality and remorselessness of Willie, the song's narrator, has remained the same. In this new version of the old song, I have set Pretty Polly to new music for double bassist/vocalist (solo performer) and live processed video. Live video of the performer's movements as she performs are processed through a Max/Jitter program and layered with effects, and then mixed with pre-edited video footage. The performer's instrument, voice, physical gestures are all combined to create a multi-sensory retelling of this gruesome tale.

8. Three Yiddish Lullabies (2006)
multimedia performance piece for musicians and live-processed video (Max/MSP/Jitter Protocol)

Three Yiddish Lullabies is a mixed-media setting of fragmented texts in Yiddish. In three separate music and moving image settings, we are presented with a mysterious young mother. She reaches out to us through the materials, sounds, and images that surround her, yet she is always obscured or constrained. Through the broken and jumbled songs that she sings to us, we try to piece together the history of this ghostly young woman. The audience sees the piece from the point of view of the child. However, this point of view is disorganized and dream-like: obscured views of the singer are mixed with the simple imagery (birds, stars) about which she is singing. The texts are mixed as well, expressing feelings of love, loss, and imminent tragedy that the mother is experiencing, yet which the child cannot understand, and he merely focuses on the soothing tone of her voice. Images, words and sounds are continuously mixed and clouded, and my aim is to express how even a powerful memory, personal or collective, fades and distorts over time.

This piece utilizes the Jitter/Max/MSP programming language to live-process the video images. Long hanging strips of chiffon used as malleable projection surfaces, old junk shop televisions scattered in the audience, as well as other various materials are also used in this performance.

9. The Haptic Theater of Cruelty (2006)
interactive multimedia installation

The Haptic Theater of Cruelty was a collaborative group of six artists, who made an installation piece involving large-scale sculpture construction, as well as the design and construction of the Dream Arbitrator: a large, interactive bed housed in a black tent, which uses pressure sensors in the bed to trigger different sounds and projected video images in relation to the movement of people on the bed. My primary role in the group was in construction of the Dream Arbitrator, building its structure, and wiring the many force sensing resistors in the bed, as well as collecting images and sounds to be used in the playback, which was processed and controlled using the Max/MSP/Jitter programming language. I also served as producer: working on the project budget and ordering and organizing the materials used.

The Haptic Theater of Cruelty was funded by a generous grant from the University of Michigan GROCS (GRant Opportunities[CollaborativeSpaces]) group.

10. Go Down! You Blood Red Roses (2010)
performance piece for percussion and live processed sound (Max/MSP/Jitter protocol)

This piece was inspired by a folk song of the same name, as well as my recent relocation to Rhode Island, the Ocean State. The original song was a "halyard shanty" which is a working song used when hoisting the heavy topsails of an old tall ship. I am fascinated by both the coordination and fleet-footedness needed to control large sail ships as well as the combined feelings of excitement, fear, and peace experienced when being on the water, pushed along only by the wind and currents. This piece presents and explores a character, played by the performer, who both creates and controls the sea he or she travels by. It is of course a fantasy.