news news

++ a talk at CCRMA / Stanford University - May 2008

++ talks and performances in Moscow and St. Petersburg - Venues TBD - Late Spring / Early Summer '08

++ a large scale installation commissioned by Mass MoCa opening February 2009



news

++ a new installation commissioned by the MATA Festival - March 30 - April 4 2008, Brooklyn NY

++ two new tracks and a longish piece of writing on a compilation CD for the first issue of the Journal of the Valkenberg Hermitage

++ *asterisk at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art , Peekskill, NY USA May 06 - August 07) installation view

++ Jersey City Museum - Feb. 15 2007- Sept. 16 2007 // BE STILL. TAKE UP AS MUCH SPACE AS POSSIBLE.
This show is a a mini-retrospective recent installations Jersey City Museum

++ Jersey City Museum - July 29 // TOUCH installation
A showing of the sound and video installation Jersey City Museum

++ The Phoenix - and outdoor installation at a downtown new haven bus depot -- commissioned by Artspace New Haven and The City of New Haven Spring - Fall 06



pieces

You and Me, Going (2008) for 8 loudspeakers, 14 minutes — Commissioned by MATA Festival - March 30 - April 4 2008, Brooklyn NY. Curator, Christopher McIntyre

nine mountains white (2007) for 15-30 participants, tuned aluminum sculptures, choreography, prose score

Taking: The Pulse of a Medium (2007) Text + 2 Audio Pieces for CD commissioned for the first Journal of The Valkenberg Hermitage, Berlin

The Phoenix (2006) 12-Channel outdoor sound installation. Commissioned by Artspace and The City of New Haven (for "The Lot"). the piece was an interactive work whereby the form of the piece was created by the bus schedule, traffic patterns, and use of the site by pedestrians. movements around the site were compiled using infrared sensors and correlated to the spatial representation of the audio. "algorithmic bagatelles" were composed for specific months, days of the week, times of the day, down to specific hours. in several respects the work was a collaboration with transportation planner colby m. brown. (Denise Markonish, Curator)

Return to Sender (2006) w/Treva Wurmfeld video (parallel histories of open heart surgery + the rise and fall of elvis presley) - Commissioned by The Guilded Pony Performance Festival (Bethany Wright, Curator) // soundtrack mp3 (2 channel mixdown of 6 channel surround mix

not music music (2006) commissioned performance for Movement Research Festival, NYC. perforated aspects of dance of the sugarplum fairy and boyz to men (Koosil-Ja Huang, Curator)

Blank Lineup (2006) reworking of material from *asterisk as part of Group Show I at Diapason Gallery for Sound

Empty Cartoon Music (2005) - Commissioned by Carley Petesch for her show as part of for Dance Theatre Workshop's 40th Anniversary Gala // image from the nytimes article on the event

*asterisk (2005), for twelve broken grand pianos, loudspeakers, and transduced glass - Commissioned by The Peekskill Project, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill NY. originally a piece for twelve broken pianos within john ford's "ford piano" shop, the piece has evolved to be a work for seven pianos. each piano is fitted with a loudspeaker that projects a part of an algorithmic composition constructed from composed algorithmic miniatures sourced from fieldwork and recordings made in Peekskill NY. the idea was to make a piece whose sources would be within the auditory memory of most of the audience (the festival received a mostly local and regional audience) and to pass this sound and memory through several translations, ultimately ending up as environmental sound once again. each piano had a microphone dangling within the instrument. as sounds and their resonances built up within the instrument, the computer-generated piece would cut, leaving only the "spectral ghosts" or the resonances produced by the recent audio in combination with the unique acoustic features of each decaying piano. at this moment the microphones would amplify this sound, through large glass windows, back into the street. releasing these "ghosts" into the environment from where they were gathered. (Kari Conte, Curator for Peekskill Project, Marc and Livia Straus, curators for Reverence at the HVCCA, supported by The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts

Lifetime Achievement Award (2005), performance piece where for a fee silver will organize a large party in the honor of a chosen recipient's lifetime achievement. fee includes one speech by the artist as well as a speech by a noted figure within politics or humanitarianism, an embossed gold medal, lots of flowers, and dinner for 50. asking price is fifty-thousand dollars.

Sound Diplomacy I (2004), unsolicited public art proposal for decomissioned propoganda loudspeakers from Kim Jong-il's regime in several public spaces across the united states, funding and concept proposal send to president bush's office requesting audio content provided by the President on an ongoing basis (awaiting realization) // pdf copy of letter sent

Blood on Hands. Dedicated to Soldiers Acting Against Their Conscience (2004), for prepared piano + prepared pianist - Score published and commissioned by "Nuke Magazine" Paris - (awaiting performance)

for 3 percussionists and eight locations (2004) brief graphic score for three players, eight music stands, 16 sound objects, and choreography (awaiting performance)

falling music (for alvin lucier) (2004) for 1000 tambourine chimes immediately replacing the falling leaves of a deciduous tree one by one (awaiting realization)

carousels (parallax) (2004), 19 transcriptions, 19 metronomes, 1000' wire - Commissioned for Wandering Rocks Revolving Doors exhibition as part of the Centennial Bloomsday and presented in the atrium of the James Joyce Centre Dublin Ireland. (Susan Sakash, Curator)

People in Boxes I (2003) gallery installation for two participants in different boxes creating a telepresent touch relationship within close proximity (awaiting performance)

Pinball (2003) game music for solo prepared piano and pianist with pianohammer-activated-ball bearings of varying sizes. pianist is given instructions as to how the game is played consisting of the ideal of moving the ball bearings across obstacles set up on the piano. the piece ends when the ball bearings end up inside the piano on the sound board; requiring expensive repair; or in buckets placed in the sound holes (if cost is a prohibiting factor for the performance)

ummer secret imaginery music (2003), sculptural exaltation of a schizophrenic acquaintance's silent guitar playing, audio transduced through the body of stringless acoustic guitar playing resonances of mashed-up Eddie Van Halen and Joe Satriani solos

Anthem (2002) psychosomatic tranformative ritual performance for voice, supercollider, loudspeakers. the vocalist performs a detailed graphic score within which staff lines are correlated to parts of the body that are capable of being touched by the sounds made by the vocal cords and chest. the text is an anagramed version of the unites states national anthem; the piece was inspired by the hasidic jewish perception that texts can be tranformed by re-fitting them to new music, thereby transforming the meaning. Premiered by Daniela Gesundheit at the World Music Hall, Wesleyan University // mp3

Scale (2002) for just intonation synthesizer and shortwave radio - based on a tuning system with a center pitch of 139 Hz intended as a privately performed recording. . a type of personal installation delivered on cd. instructions for realization were: to be performed at a volume slightly larger than that of the immediate acoustic environment for twentyfour hours but no shorter than one hundred twentysix minutes and at least fiftyfour consecutive minutes in the presence of a potential listener - Released on Stasisfield as 1/2 of Utopian Artifacts // mp3

Soundtrack for Paper (2001) a film by David McDougall premiered at the Wesleyan Student Film Festival 2001

Shadows and Overlays (2001) A collaborative project with eight strangers leading to an installation of several living environments composed of the same objects. (awaiting performance)

Very Brief Piece for String Quartet and Ball Bearings (2001) For Alvin Lucier. all four members of the quartet walk on stage with their instruments. everyone except the cellist places their instrument on their chairs. all members of the quartet play the cello. the violinists perform using ball-bearings to alter the pitch (one on the top two strings, one on the bottom). each has open-style headphones playing a pre-recorded "score" whose pitch material they are to mimic using the ball bearings. the cellist and the violist each bow the instrument, splitting strings as the violinists have, following a score totally unco-ordinated with the violins.

scant motives (2001), intricately constistent/inconsistent unjoining chamber music for octet (instrumentation variable).

Touch (2000) Halcyon Tone Generators, Fractal Noise, Guitar, Video - Released on Stasisfield lable as part of Utopian Artifacts // mp3 // mid-fi mp4 (65mb) Premiered at German Haus, Wesleyan University (Daniel Rami, Curator)

Genesis (2000) For John Barlow. Performance for a large empty space, rows of chairs, heavy books, 10-20 performers and one non-participating observer.

murmurs (2000), A series of short works based on electrocardiagrams of outpatients from Athol Memorial Hospital , Athol MA

spell (2000): mobile music of 26 unconducted lettered (A-Z) compositions (ranging from notated pieces several minutes in duration to prose scores that produce different forms of silence) for six instruments performing spatially with a no-tech system of self-conduction and material development based on temporal overlays of inner pulses and pulses existing in the performance space (awaiting completion)

HEX (1999): a modular group of short compositions for 6 instruments with correlated spatial choreographies. premiered at Flywheel in Easthampton MA

Popular Music for Popular Feelings (1999-present): a collection of songs that I make for people with whom I share a feeling that I recognize as having more references in media than in my own life. or songs that communicate something direct and personal across emotional grooves lathed by media.

Spring Music for Clouds (1999), springtime hillside chamber music repetitions for "conducting" clouds, sculptural grid-score (through which players view the clouds), and amplified instruments (awaiting performance)



Given the way sound is used in many of these works, there is not a reasonable way to distribute the audio over the internet. If you would like sound samples emailed to you with some instructions as to how to realize them in your personal space, please drop me a line .




images :: click here for a gallery of images from recent work ::







the state

Micah Silver's work often finds its balance in the irreconcilable fascinations of time perception and a closeness to the sensuality of sound. His work is constructed as a site of self-examination, creating frictions between the perceptual bounds of practical society and the optimistically impractical possibilities suggested by the work.

Shows have been mounted by the Jersey City Museum in a mini-retrospective called "BE STILL. TAKE UP AS MUCH SPACE AS POSSIBLE," at Artspace New Haven's outdoor space called The Lot (a municipal bus stop and green space), the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art as part of the "Reverence" exhibition, The Peekskill Project , and The James Joyce Centre, Dublin as part of Wandering Rocks Revolving Doors. Silver's conceptual work and text has been published in Nuke Magazine (Paris), The Journal of the Valkenberg Hermitage (Berlin), and will accompany a forthcoming DVD by Diapason Gallery for Sound (New York City). Micah has given talks at Eyebeam Gallery, ApexArt, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Wesleyan University, Ford Piano, and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. This spring he will speak at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, and the Theremin Centre in Moscow. Silver has received awards and grants from Wesleyan University, Meet the Composer, The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, the State of Massachusetts, and others. Currently he is working on commissions from the MATA Festival, Mass MoCA, and a member of ESL and dance-theater and sound collective in Troy NY.

Background Information: Micah Silver was born in 1980 in Sylva, North Carolina but grew up in a small town called New Salem in western Massachusetts. He studied at Wesleyan University with Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton, and Ron Kuivila and privately with Raphé Malik, Lewis Spratlan, and Earle Brown. CV