Composing With Living Systems: Performance Symbols, Objects and Animism by Rama Gottfried

Abstract:
Rama Gottfried’s recent work focuses on magnifying the plethora of details that connect humans with the computers, instruments, plants, insects, amphibians, architecture and other animate and inanimate entities and spaces that surround us. In this talk, Rama will give an overview to the aesthetics and technical approaches used in his work for ensembles, spaces and human-computer systems, and discuss his current IRCAM/ZKM research project on “Symbolic Representation and Performance for Media Composition." 

Biography:
Composer and media artist Rama Gottfried (1977) is recent doctoral graduate from the University of California, Berkeley where he studied with Franck Bedrossian, Edmund Campion, Adrian Freed and David Wessel. Previously, he completed composition studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin, the Manhattan School of Music, New York University, and the University of Vermont. His previous teachers have included: Walter Zimmermann, Marc Sabat, Nils Vigeland, Reiko Fueting, Justin Dello Joio, Joel Chadabe and Ernie Stires. He has had pieces featured at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, MaerzMusik, SPOR, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, MATA, Klangwerkstatt, ICMC, Wet Ink and Machine Project/Hammer Museum festivals and sound installations at the Berliner Congress Center, Complice, Mino Washi Paper Museum, Stadtbad-Wedding and Pacific Basin Building. In 2002 he joined Ensemble Pamplemousse where he collaborated for many years working in electro-acoustic music and the merging of sound, installation and performance arts.

In 2012, Rama was in residence at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) working with the Acoustic and Cognitive Spaces Team on aesthetic applications of Wave Field Synthesis and Higher Order Ambisonics. In 2017-18, he has been in residence at IRCAM and Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie working on notation and audio/visual performance systems for spatial movement. In January 2018, Rama relocated back to Berlin and began a postdoctoral position at the school of Multimedia Composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hamburg.