Seth Cluett plays Laurie Spiegel

Join us at e-flux on Thursday, April 24, at 7pm for a performance by Seth Cluett presenting six multi-channel spatial diffusions of Laurie Spiegel’s works Pentachrome, The Unquestioned Answer, Drums, Passage, East River Dawn, and A Harmonic Algorithm 2020, as well as Cluett’s Affordances. 

Laurie Spiegel is a pioneering composer and computer music innovator known for her explorations of algorithmic composition and early synthesizer technology. Spiegel played a key role in the development of electronic music, joining Bell Labs in 1973 to explore the creative potential of computers for music composition. Among her many contributions, in 1986 she developed Music Mouse - An Intelligent Instrument, an algorithmic music composition software for Mac, Amiga and Atari computers. Her album The Expanding Universe (1980) is a landmark in its genre and has influenced generations of electronic musicians. Beyond earthly listeners, her music was included on the Voyager Golden Record, carrying her sounds to outer space as part of an interstellar message for potential extraterrestrial listeners. 

Seth Cluett is a composer and visual artist who creates work that explores everyday actions at extreme magnification, examines minutiae by amplifying impossible tasks, and investigates memory in forms that rethink the role of the senses in an increasingly technologized society. Ranging from photography and drawing to installation, concert music, and critical writing, his “subtle… seductive, immersive” (Artforum) sound work has been characterized as “rigorously focused and full of detail” (e/i) and “dramatic, powerful, and at one with nature” (The Wire). Exploring the territory between the senses, Cluett’s works are marked by a detailed attention to perception and to the role of sound in the creation of a sense of place, the workings of memory, and the experience of time. His research interests and critical writings investigate embodiment, sound in virtual and augmented reality, the media history of the loudspeaker, and computational creativity. The recipient of grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Fund and Meet the Composer, his work has been presented internationally at venues such as The Whitney Museum, MoMA/PS1, Moving Image Art Fair, CONTEXT Art Miami, GRM, and STEIM. His concert work has been commissioned by ensembles ranging from the Hong Kong Sinfonietta and the International Contemporary Ensemble to So Percussion, Catch Guitar Quartet, and Clogs and is documented on Line, Sedimental, Notice, and Winds Measure recordings. Since 2017, Cluett has served as Artist-in-Residence at Nokia Bell Labs and is Director of the Computer Music Center and Assistant Director of the Sound Art MFA Program at Columbia University.

The program of sound performances at e-flux is curated by Sanna Almajedi. 

For more information, please contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility           
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.         
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.