A. Campbell Payne is a musician living in Massachusetts whose practice revolves around time, repetition, chance, and perception. Payne’s approach to composition is characterized by complex rhythmic structures, a harmonic vocabulary that explores consonant intervals in just intonation, and the use of complex generative systems. Drawing inspiration from dance, the history of computing and telecommunications, and the movement of nearby celestial bodies, Payne creates sonic environments that are at once approachable and disorienting.
I have had some horribly disturbing waking dreams of being a monstrous apparition, part-man, but mostly machine; soulless and demonic, terrorizing man and beast alike with sounds unlike any other, sounds that alternately inspire and chill, lifting spirits only to dash them again on some distant rocky shore comprised of dissonance and psychotic visions. I am haunted by sizable blackouts, what some refer to as lost time, and frequently awaken in unknown locations, smelling of Malört and regret with nothing to explain my activities save for a plectrum and a few patch chords.
Dominique Cyprès discovered modular synthesis techniques in late 2020, after completing a computer science degree at UMass Lowell, and began recording dark ambient synth compositions using the VCV Rack virtual modular synthesis software. Their recordings also include digressions into arrangements of classical and traditional compositions, sound collage with historical audio materials, and energetic compositions influenced by darkwave and IDM. They live near Hartford, Connecticut.
Ordinary Peter (that is, Peter Raffensperger) has been writing electronic music for the entirety of this millennium. After many years in New Zealand and then California, he is now based in Massachusetts. He fell into the world of Eurorack in 2015 and has not recovered. In 2022, he summoned forth Wizard Peter as his live performance alter ego.
Wizard Peter uses his modular synthesizer along with other electronic equipment to make music. The visual aspects of his performances include ASCII art. His artistic themes include math, science, retro computing and alchemical self-transformation.
Jaina Cipriano is a Boston based artist communicating with the world through photography, film and installation. Her works explore the emotional toll of religious and romantic entrapment.
Jaina creates her photographs in built sets, forgoing digital manipulation because she believes creating something truly immersive starts with the smallest details. A self taught carpenter, she loves a challenge and her larger than life sets draw inspiration from the picture books and cartoons of her childhood. Jaina writes and directs short films that wrestle with the complicated path of healing.
In 2020 she released ‘You Don’t Have to Take Orders from the Moon’, a surrealist horror film wrestling with the gravity of deep codependency. Her second short, ‘Trauma Bond’ is a dreamy coming of age thriller currently in the festival circuit.
Working with many local organizations to support and strengthen the community, Jaina was a judge for The Arlington International Film Festival, she dispersed funds for the inter-media portion of the Somerville Arts Council Grant Board, built sets for Arlington Friends of the Drama and served on the board of the New England Sculptors Association. Jaina is also the founder of Finding Bright, a design studio specializing in building spaces that transform.
Jaina studied at The New England School of Photography and has been exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions around New England. She is currently a Boston Fellow at Mass Art’s Creative Economy Business Incubator and Merrimack Valley’s E for All Accelerator program.
Metal Tiger aka Sam Holland has been obsessed with electronic music and instrumental beats since he first heard DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing in high school. His hip-hop inflected electronic beats are both funky and experimental, groovy and spiritual. He got a real education in bass and bleeps in South Florida as part of the legendary IDM scene there, playing with acts such as Machinedrum and Flashbulb.
Returning to the Boston area, he has worked on the development of the MPC sampler, helped run the popular Meetup group Boston Modular and Synth, and thrown shows at venues like Dorchester Arts Project and Mayday. He is the founder of World Elevator Society Records, and is a member of Recursor with Archvillainy and Solune with Sophia Perennis. Metal Tiger’s influences include DJ Krush, Prefuse 73, Machinedrum, Orbital, and the RZA.
Waldobot – Live at Boston Modular and Synth Meetup
Lifetime classical pianist expands his repertoire to include ambient synthesizer music. Renee Zon is the stage name of Peter Omalyev, a longtime composer and performer currently based out of New Haven CT. Peter has been composing for multiple decades, including classical and jazz music, as well as typical band performances.
Eric Lennartson will perform on March 18, 2023 at 11:20AM ET. His presentation, A Brief History of Oscilloscope Music + Art, will occur at 2:45PM ET in Durgin room 204. Click here for the full program
Eric Lennartson is an Oscilloscope Artist, Composer, and Improviser based in Los Angeles. His audio-visual work makes use of analog oscilloscopes, an old piece of electronic testing equipment. While performing, he sends the sounds from his computer directly to the scope and a set of speakers simultaneously. In doing so, sound and image create a feedback loop of meaning. Although sounds create the images, the images have a direct influence on the creation of the sounds. The resulting effect is non objective imagery that interacts with dense noise, pulsating tones, and unstable beats. Through this interaction he explores the intersections between the analog and the digital, as well as the different perspectives and meanings inherent to the sound and image themselves. He has a master’s in Performance and Composition from the California Institute of the Arts and a bachelor’s in Percussion Performance from the University of North Texas. His works have been presented at the Vector Hack Festival in Rijeka Croatia, Music For Your Inbox, and can also be seen as part of an installation at Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart, in Las Vegas.
