Jacob Richman - In progress...

In the Works: Verdant Vibes and Tenderloin Opera Company

2015-08-04T08:22:00.001-07:00

My partner Kirsten Volness and I were recently awarded a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts to put on a small new music festival in Providence. The festival is called Verdant Vibes, and will include a call for scores/new music from RI-based artists. We will have a launch party/concert with the Verdant Vibes Ensemble and friends (including Blevin Blectum and JPA Falzone) at Aurora in early December, and a concert of selected works from the call for scores in Spring 2016 at the South Side Cultural Center in Providence. More details soon!

Tenderloin Opera Company has been selected to present at the 2016 New Music Gathering in Baltimore. We will discuss how our program creates theatre and music, how it presents the stories of homelessness in RI, and how it interacts with the homeless community and other outreach organizations. We hope to be able to bring as many members to the event and will run a fundraising campaign this Fall and Winter to help fund the modest travel expenses. More details soon!

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mid-summer work: Meridian Project and Windeye

2014-07-23T14:06:00.002-07:00

This summer has been beautiful in Rhode Island. I am excited to continue teaching in the Art and Film Media Departments at Rhode Island in the fall, as well as a new class on digital media production at Bryant University in the Spring.

In the meantime, I have been continuing my work with the Meridian Project. After two successfull performances – Dark Matter and Comets – I have recently received a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts to help fund our work, which will include a new performance piece about the sun, and an open-to-the-public glass marimba building workshop and performance. More details soon.

I am also continuing work on the multifaceted project, Windeye, with Andie Springer. This piece will have two iterations as a music video (fixed media) piece to be released with Andie's album at the end of the year, and an interactive installation and live performance. I am mixing Andie's violin and voice parts this month with the wonderfully talented musician/engineer Brett Parnell. Will post more samples soon!

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music sample from Windeye

2014-06-24T11:09:00.002-07:00

Here's a short (rough mix) music sample from the piece Windeye, based on a short story by Brian Evenson.

Windeye is a piece in progress for violin/voice, electronic audio, and video. It will be presented in two versions in the near future: as a music/video (single channel) piece featured on violinist Andie Springer's album (release in fall 2014) and as an interactive installation piece, also coming this fall.

performer (violin/voice): Andie Springer
text (used by permission): Brian Evenson

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"(Unfinished) Ballad" mentioned in artist/curator Sonya Russell-Saunders' Blog

2014-03-07T08:59:00.002-08:00

The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery
was mentioned in UK artist/curator Sonya Russell-Saunders' blog:
http://sonyarussellsaunders.tumblr.com/post/78231676946/jacob-richman-the-unfinished-ballad-of-adam-and

Ms. Russell-Saunders interviewed me regarding roving performances and ways in which performance and theater artist can use audience movement in their work. I'll post it as it comes available.

Thanks Sonya!

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Windeye in Development, and Recording Session with Andie Springer

2014-01-21T22:17:00.000-08:00

I finished a draft of the violin/voice music that Andie Springer will be playing for the piece in development: Windeye

We will be recording the material in late February in NYC.

Windeye is a performance setting of a short story of the same name by Brian Evenson. Prof. Evenson was kind enough to give me permission to use his text. It will eventually be a piece that will take place in the Curtain Room installation setting, but Andie will be recording the music as a "suite" and I we will be producing a music video mixing this musical material with visual material relating to Evenson's story of a narrator who loses her sister under mysterious circumstances. This music video will be distributed with Andie's album she's recording right now with a number of other fabulous composers and friends. I'm honored to be taking part.

I'll post clips from our session when I get them.

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meeting with author Brian Evenson

2013-12-17T07:23:00.000-08:00

Had a pleasant discussion with author and Brown U. writing Professor Brian Evenson about the influence his collection of short stories Windeye, and in particular the title story, has on themes of fading memories, false memories, and the momentary confluence of different planes of reality that I have been working with recently. This includes the work I have been doing on the further development of the Curtain Room installation, and the music I am writing for Andie Springer's upcoming audio/visual album. I'm hoping the projects will combine, probably next spring/summer, into an installation and performance setting of the Curtain Room in which Andie will perform. Prof. Evenson allowed me to some text from his work for the voice/violin music I am working on for Andie. I will continue to work closely with him to make sure my use of his work is properly credited/attributed as this rather amorphous project develops.

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Curtain Room - revisited

2013-11-22T16:26:00.000-08:00

I am reworking the servo motor control system for the Curtain Room (the hanging curtain installation space used in The (unfinished) Ballad...). The goals are to make the control more flexible, to be able to control each curtain motor individually no matter how many I use, and to bring the control for this all into Max rather than leaving much of it processed in the Arduino programming. I am more familiar with Max and it has more dynamic potential to control the curtains manually, algorithmically, and using external sensors. I approximated a number of these controls for The (unfinished) Ballad..., but for a long time had trouble getting the data from Max formatted properly and sent to the Arduino (which controls the curtain motors) through the serial port. Serial data can be finicky, especially large streams of data, and overloads in the serial port can CRASH EVERYTHING! After a lot of trial and error, and help from pretty much every help forum on the internet, this control seems to work more or less. Below is a little video (with no sound) of me demonstrating the individual control of servos using a usb slider. It might seem pretty boring, but the fact that I can move many different servors independently and AT THE SAME TIME!(see note on serial port overload) is a pretty major achievement for me. Next step will be to re-sew and repair the curtains and get them up and moving in various patters using various input types of control.

I am folding this installation work into a collaboration with Andie Springer, who paid me and Kirsten a visit from NYC to talk about the piece. Music and video that will be used in this new curtain installation and performance setting will be recorded in January 2014 and produced for Andie's upcoming audio-visual album. Congrats to her, Kirsten, and Hotel Elefant for their fantastic performance at New Music, New Voices at Carnegie Hall on Weds!

Thanks to Karen and Audie at MSUMC for letting me work in there again!

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Meridian Project - 2014

2013-11-13T22:27:00.000-08:00

Working with an incredible group of my favorite people – Kirsten Volness, Josh Lantzy, Jamie Topper, Caroline Doherty, and Jeremy Chapman – on a multimedia performance series that will take place spring 2014 at the Cormack Planetarium at Roger Williams Park in Providence. Performances will mix music, live-processed imagery using the Planetarium's historic Zeiss Star Projector (!!!), and presentations on topics in astrophysics and cosmology, including Jeremy's ground breaking work in Dark Matter Detection.

PLEASE HELP SUPPORT:
https://www.newmusicusa.org/?project_preview=7963&msg=preview

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Violin Music for Upcoming Recording Session with Andie Springer

2013-11-13T16:52:00.000-08:00

I am honored to be working with an incredibly talented friend, violinist Andie Springer! I am writing short pieces for violin and voice for her inspired by the short story "Windeye" by Brian Evenson. Recording will be in January in NYC. I'll post any progress...

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What next?...

2013-03-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

Dissertation performance went fantastically well in Nov., diss paper in to my readers, defense April 12.

Thinking about what next. Working on stuff with "Adam Emery" dancer Brandon Shaw, and have my eye on this incredible space: The Pawtucket Armory drill hall. Huge, wood, gorgeous. Video tests hopefully in the next couple of weeks...

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The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery, Nov. 3rd + 4th

2012-10-25T10:12:00.002-07:00

The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery

dissertation performance piece by Jacob Richman

8pm, Saturday and Sunday, November 3rd and 4th, 2012
Mathewson Street United Methodist Church
134 Mathewson St. Providence, RI
FREE

The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery is a multimedia installation and roving performance piece based on a murder story that took place in Rhode Island in the early 1990s. It is a setting which utilizes four dancers, nine musicians, and almost a dozen rooms of the Mathewson Street United Methodist Church in downtown Providence. It is a mobile murder ballad based on dreams and echoes, fragmented words, images, sounds, and objects inspired by this heartbreaking story. In The (unfinished) Ballad… the audience moves throughout the five floors of the building, filled with performers and various interactive media technology, from large video projections to nine-foot tall robotic curtains, cell phone buzzers, broken lobster traps, blue cellophane, cloth, and the haunting presence of the historic Mathewson St. Church itself, all unified to recreate and reinterpret a tragic and unexplainable act of violence and the folklore that surrounds it.

Featuring: 
Adrian Moore, Anna Muselmann, Brandon Shaw, and Stephanie Turner (dancers/choreographers)  Yayra Sanchez (soprano)
 Aliana de la Guardia (mezzo soprano)
Rossana Chung, Abigale Reisman (violin)
Ken Allen (viola)
Anna Seda (cello)
 Kirsten Volness (piano/keyboard)  
Peter McGrath (trumpet)
Jeffrey Neilson (percussion) 
Matt Desmarais (seismic activity) 

For more information visit: http://www.jacob-richman.com/ballad.html

HELP FUND PERFORMERS WITH INDIE GO GO CAMPAIGN!!! (any little bit helps and it all goes to the amazing/talented performers) http://www.indiegogo.com/HelpFundPerformers

Thanks for your support!
Jacob

More stills/video of Mathewson St. Church performance site

2012-09-25T13:32:00.001-07:00

Some more documentation of some of the performance and installation spaces at the church for The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery.

Performance Sat Nov. 3rd, 8pm
Mathewson St. United Methodist Church
134 Mathewson St. Providence RI

More Stills/video of Mathewson St. Church performance site from Jacob Richman on Vimeo.

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Presenting at Conference "Crusing in the Ruins" @ Northeastern U. Sept. 22

2012-09-20T13:35:00.000-07:00

Saturday, Sept. 22nd, 2pm
Northeastern University
Curry Student Center, McLeod Suite B, rm. 320
346 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA

I will be giving a brief presentation at the conference Crusing in the Ruins, organized by the BABEL Working Group.

The talk will be entitled Rhode Island Murder and Horror Stories in Performance: Adam Emery, Mercy Brown, and the Devil’s Footprint and I will discuss setting past and contemporary Rhode Island folk, horror, and murder stories to performances, including the projects Mercy Brown and the Devil's Footprint and The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery.

I will talk about reenactment, playing with bones, haunting the scene of the crime, seance, and using these things to try to understand incomprehensible stories.

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dance team!

2012-09-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

Had two fantastic first rehearsals this week with the four dancers in this piece:

-Stephanie Turner, Brandon Shaw (interpreting Adam/Elena Emery)
-Henry Nicholas and Laisha (interpreting Crystal/Jason Bass)

I'm very lucky to have them on board!

It's great to have actual human beings up at the performance space which was previously only filled with electronics, fabric, and media junk (including me). The blood's starting to circulate...

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some location/room dressing: kitchenette and stairwell

2012-08-03T05:50:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of rudimentary videos of some new spaces at Mathewson St. Church.

In the first I demo an idea I have for an old kitchenette in the backstage area. This place will become a installation space of a general domestic area with some home-made multimedia interpretations of details from the Emery/Bass story. However there is always an uneasiness, and a nagging rustling noise (rustling noises like insects or rodents in the wall have been recurring in my mind about this piece, which I mainly interpret as harbingers and warnings). The video shows little 3Volt pager/cell phone motors I am controlling with a button, through the Arduino and an H-Bridge (Texas Instruments SN754410). All the motors are wired to the same control, though eventually I'll program them to move independent from each other and randomly. In the performance the wires, microcontroller/circuit, will be hidden (mostly) as will the motors in the drawers, sink, etc. However I do want them to pop out and roam around at will. Instead of critters like mice or insects scurrying or scratching out a warning, these are electronic critters with their own personalities.

The second video is just a really rough demo of the awesome/beautiful back staircase at the church with a FIVE SECOND REVERB! I apologize for my atrocious singing, but the idea is that the actual good performers will be singing/chanting in this incredible space, accompanied by temple bowls, and video/lights. Can't wait!

"The (unfinished) Ballad..." Aug1 dissertation tests 1 - buzz motors from Jacob Richman on Vimeo.

"The (unfinished) Ballad..." Aug1 dissertation tests 2 - stairwell reverb from Jacob Richman on Vimeo.

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Curtain Room Pics - early July

2012-07-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

Some pics of the expanded curtain room. All the curtains work and spin on command. Wiring will be hung from the ceiling, leaving performers/audience free to move about. The larger layout and number of curtains will allow different groups of curtains to act independently to conceal and reveal performers, and change perspective of the video projected onto them....it's very hot up there also.

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Update

2012-06-21T22:30:00.000-07:00

I've spent the past month reacting to the tech demo, the biggest question being: in exactly what manner is the piece related to the story of the Emerys and the murder of Jason Bass? What level of literalness or abstraction? This has always been a very tough question, but I believe I'm getting close to the sweet spot of this relationship. Closer, at least.

I've been working a lot on content (music/sound, video). And trying to figure out the best way to measure audience/performer proximity in the curtain room (see here). I've been reaching out to performers and collaborators and will meet with dancer/actors Shura Baryshnikov and Peter Deffet (whom I've worked with before). They're both fantastic. We'll be meeting in the same space as the demo show (Mathewson St. Church) where I'll be doing more work with the installation stuff next month.

I haven't put any music up here, since I'm much more squeamish about putting in-progress music up than in-progress video or tech. But here's the theme of the piece, which has been rattling around in my head for two years, and is for toy piano/fender rhodes. Though it pops up all over in one way or another during the piece.

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Video Documentation of May 18th Demo Show

2012-06-02T08:25:00.000-07:00

Here's a brief video walk-through from the May 18th demo show at Mathewson St. Methodist Church. It was a very helpful event and I really appreciate Karen and Audie and others from the Church letting me use this amazing theater space on the top floor of their historic building. I also appreciate all my friends, advisers, and colleagues who came and gave me very useful feedback, especially Peter Bussigel who always gives fantastic and engaging responses that keep me thinking on my toes.

It was a good start, but just a start. I was able to hint at what these three spaces are capable of, and the spaces can be expanded (more curtains) or pared down (fewer monitors, etc). It was mostly a tech demo, and I admit was low on content (video, audio, music). But for these large scale performance/installation spaces, it's really impossible to visualize what they might look or sound like in my little mock-ups at the MEME studio. The work done here, especially building/programming, is bankable and I have asked the Church to allow me to work in these spaces for an extended period later this month, which I think will be the only way I can build and "practice" these spaces as performance tools (as instruments!). I am also excited to start bringing more of the music and video I've been working on, along with performers into theses spaces to try stuff out: will keep you posted.

Video below (full resolution is only available at the Vimeo page)

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16 Channel Amp building pix

2012-05-21T07:57:00.000-07:00

This is an amp I built will be used for the "audio hallway" installation of The (unfinished) Ballad.... It has 16 independent audio channels going to 16 little speakers hanging in a hallway. This amp (which has an attached 5V power source not seen here and can be expanded to 24 or even 32 channels!) will hopefully serve as a good project amp for use in installations or other applications in which control over a large group of discreet audio channels is needed (extreme spatialization!). Special thanks to Charlie Vickers at the Joint Engineering Physics Instrument Shop for helping me bend and cut the metal for the amp housing.

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(unfinished) Ballad...In-Progress Demo Show Scheduled for May 18th

2012-05-05T07:33:00.000-07:00

I've scheduled an in-progress/demo presentation for The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery.
It will be:

Friday, May 18th, 4-7pm
Mathewson St. Methodist Church
134 Mathewson Street Providence, RI
(between Westminster and Washington sts)

It will be on the 4th floor in an amazing children's blackbox theater, put in by a now extinct theater group. I'll be using a number of rooms and the presentation will be mostly a tech demo of the moving curtains, multi-little speaker hallway, and the 3-screen Sgt. Zarrella/Rescue dog installation. I will have some audio/video content in these installations, but the main goal is to make sure these "instruments" work and see how they sit with each other in different rooms. All comments/criticisms/responses are welcome.

The presentation will be informal and on-going 4-7pm, so come when you can!

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(unfinished) Ballad...Curtain/Motor Demo Video May1st

2012-05-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

So I settled on servo motors instead of steppers. They are lighter, cheaper (I have a bunch from a previous piece anyway), robust, and easy to wire (no driver chips needed, just ground, power and pwm control signal) and stronger than they look. They don't turn more than 180degress, but it doesn't seem to matter yet. I had trouble getting the steppers to work with their drivers being controlled by the Arduino. Although I didn't give it a true "college try"-- the other drawbacks (weight, cost, complexity) was more important to my decision. In this demo I've set up a Wii-remote to control their position. This will be a tool used by a performer (mezzo-soprano, singing a solo, channeling Elena Emery). When the "curtain room" is not in use by performers, it will be a installation, controlled by sensors (passive infrared and or ultrasonic pulse) monitoring audience members and randomly reorienting while it plays back the audio/video content.

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Unfinished Ballad...interview w/Sgt. Zarrella

2012-04-19T10:15:00.003-07:00

[UPDATE 5/12/12: I removed the interview of Sgt. Zarrella from public viewing for now. It will be part of a 3-channel video installation that will be on view during the in-progress show May 18 described above]

RI State Police Sgt. Matthew Zarrell is the head seach and rescue dog trainer for the RI Troopers, and he was the one who searched for the Emerys under the Newport Bridge with his dog Hannibal.

In the interview he talks about the history of rescue dog training in RI, his first training dog Hannibal (check him out!), and his work with Hannibal on the Emery case.

This footage will be used with other old footage of Hannibal and of Sgt. Z training dogs now in an installation setting used as part of the performance piece "The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery."

Thanks to Sgt. Zarrella, and to filmmaker Mary Healey Jamiel for getting us in touch. Please check out her amazing documentary "Reliance" about Sgt. Zarrella's work HERE.

Attn dog lovers: Footage I took of Sgt. Z training search and rescue dogs this week will be up soon!

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Pretty Ok Week!

2012-03-30T15:36:00.004-07:00

Pretty productive week. Reached out to a few more possible performers/collaborators. Nailed down an interview with Sgt. Matthew Zarrella, rescue dog trainer extraordinaire, to talk about his work with his dog HANNIBAL (thanks Mary Healy Jamiel) who searched for the Emerys' bodies underneath the Newport Bridge.

Worked on electronics/programming for the CURTAIN ROOM: an installation room with multiple curtains hooked to motors which turn to reconfigure the room as people move through it. Think a changing Red Room from Twin Peaks, but instead of it being red, are projections on the curtains as they move and change the space.

Servo vs Stepper motors, that is the eternal question. I managed to fail in my last attempt a few years back building this room with Servos (weird false triggers and VERY SPOOKY curtains spinning for no reason), though I never really knew what I was doing. Went back to basics this week and had a lot of luck getting the Servos to do what I wanted them to. Now I got this big beautiful Stepper Motor, but couldn't get it to work before busing-home-time today, only managed to over-heat the H-bridge ...the diagram below is the bane of my existence. At least I wrote some music this week (crappy MIDI realization samples up soon).

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Creative Arts Council Grant Award

2012-03-17T07:16:00.002-07:00

Thanks so much to the Creative Arts Council for awarding me their maximum $1000 to help realize The (unfinished) Ballad...!

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Castle Theater Pictures

2012-03-02T14:00:00.006-08:00

Some pictures of the Castle Theater including main screening room, bar room, some connecting halls and basement stuff.

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