Audible gallery: The Roedelius Cells
In partnership with the Goethe Institut
Audio Installation by Tim Story, Piano by Hans-Joachim Roedelius
December 11, 2020 - January 31, 2021, by appointment
Contact info@ess.org to schedule a time to view the exhibition. Limit 3 people per group.
Exhibition weekend:
December 11, 2020 - Virtual opening.
December 12, 2020, noon-5pm - safe, in-person exhibition visits by appointment. Click here to reserve your spot. Limit to 3 people per group. Gallery disinfected between visits.
December 13, 2020, 1pm CT - Listen to Roedelius and Story as they speak about their long collaboration history and how the project evolved. In the Q+A following their conversation, you may pose your questions to both artists. Watch on The Quarantine Concerts here.
The Roedelius Cells is a multi-channel audio installation created by Grammy-nominated US composer/sound artist Tim Story, constructed from thousands of short extracts culled from a decade of informal piano recordings made with friend and colleague Hans-Joachim Roedelius. The Chicago presentation of this work will include a virtual listening environment created by Matthew Gantt.
Short, repeating layers – consisting of thousands of fragments, each often just a second or two in duration – create a complex, syncopated interplay.
To extend the process of ‘re-composition’ to participants, Story incorporates a playback system that divides the individual layers of each piece discretely amongst eight speakers. The Roedelius Cells surrender their cohesion and re-coalesce in unique and unrepeatable ways for each individual participant as they explore the soundstage.
Challenging ideas of authorship, appropriation and composition, The Roedelius Cells blurs distinctions between composer and listener, and slyly subverts assumptions of what piano music can be.
Hans-Joachim Roedelius has profoundly influenced generations of musicians in a career spanning more than a half-century and over 100 solo and collaborative recordings. From his groundbreaking duo Cluster with Dieter Moebius, to his genre-crossing solo works and collaborations with luminaries including Brian Eno, Roedelius is recognized as one of Europe’s most important sound pioneers. Equally at ease with the most abstract of electronics and the most evanescent of piano solos, Roedelius has exerted an indelible, global impact on ambient, electronic, experimental, and wholly undefinable genres of music.
Grammy-nominated American composer Tim Story has been called "a master of electronic chamber music" (CD Review, USA), and a "true artist in the electronic medium" (Victory review, USA). Through three decades of influential recordings and live performances, Story’s unique blend of careful composition and innovative sound design has garnered a dedicated worldwide following.
Longtime friends and colleagues, Roedelius and Story have partnered on many musical projects, including the acclaimed albums Lunz (2003), Inlandish (2007), and Lazy Arc (2014).
Matthew D. Gantt is an artist, composer and educator based between Queens, NYC and Troy, NY. His practice focuses on sound in virtual spaces, generative systems facilitated by idiosyncratic technology, and digital production presets as sonic readymades. He worked as a studio assistant to electronics pioneer Morton Subotnick from 2016 - '18, and has been an active participant in the NYC creative community, presenting or performing at spaces such as Pioneer Works, Issue Project Room, Roulette, Babycastles, SVA Visible Futures Lab, and countless DIY venues across the US, as well as abroad (IRCAM Academy, Paris, Koma Elektronic/Common Ground, Synthesis Gallery, Berlin).
Gantt releases music with Orange Milk and Oxtail Recordings, and has taught experimental composition at both institutional and DIY spaces, including NYC non-profit/public media studio Harvestworks, CUNY Brooklyn, Bard College, Sarah Lawrence, and a variety of community workshops aimed at creating equitable access to developing technologies. In Fall '19, he joined the Electronic Arts PhD program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute/EMPAC, researching spatial sound in virtual reality and strategies for using experimental arts practices as a frame to refigure possibilities for immersive media futures.
