'David Dunn: Thresholds and Fragile States'
MOCA Sounds/Defining Music ends season Thursday
The MOCA Sounds/ Defining Music season will end Thursday with a lecture and performance by composer and sound artist David Dunn.
The new series has been an artistic success and a well-attended programming feature of the new MOCA space; past performances included indigenous collective Postcommodity and Arizona sound artist Glenn Weyant.
Part composer, part scientist, Dunn was a an assistant to American composer Harry Partch in the early 70s, and remained active as a performer in the Partch ensemble for over a decade.
Over subsequent years, Dunn received over 35 grants and fellowships for both artistic and scientific research, from such prestigious institutions as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, Langlois Foundation, McCune Foundation, Ford Foundation and the US embassies to Argentina and Kyoto, Japan.
In 2005, he received the prestigious Alpert Award for music, and the Henry Cowell Award from the American Music Center in 2007. His compositions and soundscape recordings have appeared in over 500 international forums, concerts, broadcasts, and exhibitions.
On Thursday at MOCA, Dunn will perform "Thresholds and Fragile States". According to the press release, Dunn will perform "works highlighting complexity in natural and human-made systems. These compositions reveal and amplify hidden auditory features of the natural world, sounds outside of normal human perception, interactions between artificial intelligence systems and living creatures, and models of chaotic change endemic to the kinds of forces currently shaping our environment."
The performance will take place in quadraphonic surround-sound. While there is usually an admission charge to MOCA Sounds events, a generous donor has made a gift so that the performance can be free to the public.