Cycling through the Cords - The Journey with Max

Max MSP is a popular tool in the Sound Art and Interactive communities and has helped to give artists creative control to imagine and develop their ideas. Join panellists Kristin Norderval, Anastasia Clarke, and Angie Watson, with guest moderator Monica Bolles, as they discuss their journeys into learning Max MSP, their struggles and challenges along the way, and the ways in which they’ve found the tool helps to empower their work.

● KRISTIN NORDERVAL
Kristin Norderval is a composer and singer who specializes in developing new works for voice, cross-disciplinary work, and works using interactive technology. She has been commissioned by ensembles such as Den Anden Opera, Chants Libres, jill sigman/thinkdance, and the Parthenia viol consort. Her first full-length opera - The Trials of Patricia Isasa on a libretto by Naomi Wallace - was premiered in 2016 at the Monument National Theater in Montréal, Quebec with Norderval singing the lead role. It won Quebec´s OPUS prize for best production and best contemporary music. Norderval’s other credits as a soloist include performances with the Philip Glass Ensemble, Netherlands Dance Theater, Oslo Sinfonietta and the San Francisco Symphony. Her compositions and improvisations have been featured on BIS, Deep Listening, Everglade, Koch International, MSR Classics, Nendo Dango and Losen Records. The New Yorker's music critic Alex Ross included her solo CD - Aural Histories – on his list of “Ten Notable Classical Music Recordings of 2012”. In 2019 Norderval was awarded a Discovery Grant from the Opera Grants for Female Composers program for the development of a new opera - The Sailmaker´s Wife. Norderval is currently a PhD Research Fellow at the Oslo National Academy of Arts, where she is developing an interactive interface for her new opera. http://kristinnorderval.org

● ANASTASIA CLARKE (b. 1987) is a composer, performer, technologist, sound designer, and archivist. Anastasia’s live embodied electronic music performances consider the artist’s role as a healer and activist while using custom-built instruments or performing systems to arrange narrative material modularly. Performances have taken place in galleries, concert halls, DIY venues, and unsuspecting community spaces across the United States. Collaborations have included Boom Bat Gesture Performance Group, Mechanism Dance Theatre Collective, 2019–2020’s Uncommon Circuits ensemble, and a wide range of improvising instrumentalists in the NYC and San Francisco Bay Area. Clarke also speaks and presents, most recently at Expo ’74, NIME, The School for Poetic Computation, and as a visiting lecturer. In 2018 Anastasia earned an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College, and subsequently received support for work and research from the Queens Arts Fund, EMS (Stockholm), Tri-tryagain, CCRMA, and a 2020 Van Lier Fellowship at Roulette.
Website: https://anastasiaclarke.info/

● ANGIE WATSON is the founder and CEO of VoiceSign LLC. She spends her time creating a sign system representing spoken languages while spreading communication one-sign-at-a-time. You can also find her playing with her MiMU Gloves and Max as she programs wearable tech to say what people sign.
Website: http://voicesign.org

● MONICA BOLLES is a digital artist, audio engineer, and composer from Boulder, CO. Driven by her love of emerging technologies, science, and her passion for the human experience she is constantly seeking ways to connect storytelling, music, dance, 3D audio, immersive projection, gestural controls, and other forms of new technology to artistic and human explorations of scientific concepts. She has created and produced works that have been exhibited in the 140-channel speaker array at the Cube at Virginia Tech, the IMERSA Fulldome Summit, NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression), the Conference of World Affairs, among others.
Website: http://www.monicabolles.com/

Producer - Mariam Gviniashvili
Poster design - Ale Hop
Supported by Arts Council Norway - Kulturrådet