This month, our New Ear SPATIAL :: series will present works by Matthew Gantt and Ruby Poile.

Matthew Gantt will perform Music in the Shape of a Sphere, a a work for imaginary landscapes, sonic environments, digital sculptures and virtual sound objects. Using the real-time simulation capabilities of the Unreal game engine interfaced with various software synthesizers and generative sequencers in Ableton and MaxMSP via OSC, this piece operates less as a musical performance with accompanying visualizer, or a film with live score, but instead as a kind of cybernetic system where audio processes prompt change in the virtual environments, and emergent properties of the simulation drive further changes in sonic outcomes.

Ruby Poile’s ‘Oh, seedy!’ is a vulnerable admission of audio-frustration – a slow, yet consistent churn of an abrasive reality mixing with cyclical falsehoods, and the gradual degradation of its surroundings. Intrusivity expanding on all sides into every crack and crevice of conscious and collective thought, coagulating into new forms of manufactured mental illness – evil yet enticing. If one imbues artificial entities with the power to manipulate our systems of choice, where does our agency go? Where is it now? Where has it been?