JACOB RICHMAN – MULTIMEDIA ARTIST

APPLICATION FOR TENURE TRACK FACULTY IN THEATRE-PERFORMANCE
SCHOOL FOR THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

SAMPLE CREATIVE WORK DOCUMENTATION
(all images, sounds, and music by Jacob Richman unless otherwise noted,
video and other further documentation available at linked project 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. Tenderloin Opera Company (on-going collaboration)
TOC is a homeless advocacy music and theater group in Providence, RI, founded by mentor Erik Ehn. I have served as co-facilitator, co-composer, and bass player, among many other roles, for over 10 years. Watch more videos of our performances, or visit our facebook page for more group info.
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. SWARM! (2017)
an evening-length, roving performance piece for musicians, dancers, and audience-responsive electronics
SWARM! is based on themes of insect breeding swarms (mayflies), environmental degradation, and rebirth. The piece sprouted from the idea of a mysterious insect species that develops in the trash we humans discard everyday. They grow and molt and incorporate components of our waste into their bodies. They move and dance, and when the time is right, come together in an apocalyptic swarm.

The first performance took place throughout the Linde Family Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on May 11, 2017.
5. 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.

This performance features soprano Suzanne Klock