The collaborations between MAF and Nommo go back many years and, over time, evolved into an exploration of voice as a metaphor for agency. Voice is one’s ability to have their ideas communicated and heard. Agency is the ability to independently interact with the structure in which one exists and make free choices. The aim for our collaborations is to examine how might we proceed when a voice must be invented to reflect the agency of non-human participatory actors. Through these artistic collaborations, we recognize the many actors that comprise a community, living and dead, fanciful and real, voiced and unvoiced, human and non-human, self and other. The work itself urges listeners to reimagine what it looks like to interact with machines, programs, organic, and even spiritual entities in the service of artistic expression.
Nommo was created with the help of Nicholas Rich in Max/MSP and uses several sample banks, raw signal input, and digital processing to select, fragment, and construct abstract compositions in real-time for stereo and multichannel interactive performances
RUMORI
2020
Audio/Video Multi-Channel Live Participatory Experience with Victor Yrigoyen and Mitchell Keaney
Through “Rumori”, the name taken from Russolo’s manifesto L'arte dei Rumori (The Art of Noises), we invite the listener to meet this moment of expansion with the decision to reveal or keep private their thoughts as they are confronted by a microphone in a confession booth. Each person that enters is left with the same choice that we are all left with in the world and as such, each experience is unique. The installation creates a sonic landscape built from the collective input from the participants. What is left of the participants' input are fragments of a once recognizable confession, statement, murmur, and so on, until merged with the evolving Rumori soundscape. We have constructed this installation as a sonic representation of where we are now as participants in a global technological community.
*This video is a documentation of the scrolling projection from the installation and an audio recording of the live sound from the presentation.
A MADE UP SOUND
2021
Venue: Zwitschermaschine gallery
Audio/Video Installation
A Made Up Sound is a composition written by Nommo and arranged by MAF. The composition is accompanied by a corresponding video from the perspective of Nommo, interpreted by MAF. Each iteration of the piece or performance is created from an abstract score performed and recorded by the participants, as well as a discussion of the process and score in a virtual meeting with all participants which is recorded by Nommo and MAF. All of this material is collected and utilized in the creation process.
NOMMO SESSIONS: 01
2021
Venue: UDK Rundgang
Live Improvised Collaborative Multi-Channel Performance
Through a live improvised conversation, MAF and Nommo explore the relationship between human and non-human expression in a performance setting.
