IAN BRILL

Uptown Reverberation is a site-specific installation which combines electronically processed sound with objects played as automatic percussive instruments. The piece was created for the Sage Building in Pittsburgh, a structure in the Uptown area which had been slated to be destroyed by the city as part of Civic Arena redevelopment. This municipal taking echos the historic destruction of the lower Hill District in the late 1950s. The musical score is a personal response to seeing the living space

Wax Poetic is a performance installation in which water and wax are sculpted in a live response to audience input as translated into computer-generated animated fractals. The performance is centered on a large transparent table covered with a thick layer of back-lit translucent wax (upper right). Water slowly trickles across the wax like a tiny landscape and both highlights and guides the sculpting process. Audience members are able to communicate with this process by offering their own clay scu

Device Chain is a sculptural musical instrument and performance centered on a continuous paper loop which is both the source and the record of musical information. During performance, Ian Brill draws on the paper with ink pens as it feeds slowly through the machine. As the paper progresses, the ink pattern is diffused and modified by computer-controlled isopropanol mists. As the paper cycles through the rollers, a video camera images the ink pattern and generates signals in real-time to control

Colorful Code Conveyor is a performance in which children are invited to make paper cutouts which are collaged into a visual composition that controls the music. The cutouts are taped to a large canvas loop which is slowly pulled by the motorized mechanism past a camera, making one complete cycle about every eight minutes. The slowly evolving image on the canvas is processed by software in real time to modulate the audio processing. The visual re-mix of paper elements maps to an acoustic re-mix

During Synaestopic DC, words solicited from visitors are transformed into an auditory and typographic performance in real time. The artists talk to the viewers and invite them to suggest a word in response to their experience. Once a word has been named, it enters a series of transformations: it is considered, re-interpreted, performed as a spoken word or phrase, recorded as audio, re-processed, and continuously re-mixed into the audio stream together with previous words and sounds. The word is