For the fourth year, Catskill Art Space will celebrate Pride Month with a special month-long installation and performance from the queer identifying and Roscoe-local, Terry Dame.
The sound artist and creative technologist will present an interactive, geographically specific sound installation for the entire month of June in the second-floor River Gallery at CAS in Livingston Manor, NY. Inspired by the artist’s love of nature, sound and maps, the project involves recording and transforming sound environments from specific geographic areas into creative materials used to build a work of sonic and visual art. Participants draw on a large wall mounted paper canvas with sound triggering graphite bars that hang down over the surface. The “sonic pencils” trigger a combination of virtual instruments created using field recorded sound gathered from the Southern Catskills region which Dame then digitally manipulates into “playable” sounds, and more recognizable traditional musical sounds.
Culture Reporter Valerie Mansi spoek to Terry Dame.
About the Artist
Terry Dame is a creative technologist, sound artist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and educator based in New York and Roscoe. Currently, she creates and performs with interactive sensor-driven musical instruments, sculptures, and installations using found objects and found sounds to explore pathways between creativity, technology, nature, and human habitation. From 1998 to 2012, she led the percussion-based ensemble Electric Junkyard Gamelan. The group toured nationally and internationally, performing original compositions on Dame’s own artist-made instruments built from recycled objects. Dame also has an active career composing for film and dance and is an alumna of the Sundance Institute Composer Lab.
Her work has been presented at prestigious venues internationally, including the Kennedy Center, MoMA, Detroit Institute of Art, International Festival of Recycling Art, International Festival of Arts and Ideas, and Festival Archstoyanie. Dame has received support from HarvestWorks Digital Media Center, Fractured Atlas, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The Rockefeller Foundation, NYSCA, and Meet the Composer. She holds a BFA in Environmental Planning from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA in Composition and Performance from the California Institute of the Arts. Dame is currently on faculty in the MFA Computer Arts Department at the School of Visual Arts and BFA Media Arts Department at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.
Image: Terry Dame (Credit: DVAA)