Joey Bargsten
The music of composer/media artist Joey Bargsten has been played by the Indianapolis Symphony and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and has been broadcast on NPR’s International Concert Hall.His website BAD MIND TIME™ (www.badmindtime.com) has received awards from New Media and PRINT magazines, and won the Audience Award at the Stuttgart Filmwinter Festival for Expanded Media. It has been included in digital media exhibitions internationally. His films have been shown at the Brainwash (Oakland, CA) and Zero Film Festivals (Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, London).In 2009, he founded MediaExperiMentalEnsemble—meme™—which has given performances throughout South Florida. In 2011, he authored the book "Hybrid Forms and Syncretic Horizons", available free online at www.badmindtime.com/book, and in 2018 he wrote "Experimental Media Voodoo: A Practicum for Digital Art, Music, and Text", through Sentia Publishing, LLC. Bargsten was a winner of one of the 2013 Miami Knight Arts Challenge Awards for the presentation of his transmedia opera MELANCHOLALALAND™. He was one of five video artists invited to create motion visuals to accompany members of the New World Symphony in a concert recognizing the 100th Anniversary of the graphic arts association AIGA (January, 2014).Bargsten taught at University of Iowa, Georgia Tech, and University of Oregon before his current appointment at Florida Atlantic University.
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Abstract (abridged):
I consider VR experiences to be post-cinematic spatial narratives or spatial conceptual artworks. This is the foundation of my sonic work in VR: to create an environment the VR participant inhabits as a means of understanding an aesthetic space textually, visually, and sonically.
This paper documents my exploration of various compositional and sonic approaches for immersing a VR participant into both narrative and conceptual space, through a set of three VR prototypes I created between 2016 and the present. Each prototype explores a particular approach to sonic immersion, and the result of each approach is an idiomatic relationship between narrative and conceptual elements within each VR environment.
Search for full text on IEEE Explore (dot) org.
Musical score includes synopsis, stage directions, tech suggestions, and further online resources. Video documentation of performance of the opera in 2015 at Miami Beach Cinematheque at https://youtu.be/8t2QKzy73kw. Complete performance of Intermezzo “Casual (Sex) Friday™” at https://soundcloud.com/skyron/casual-sex-friday .
Audio draft available on SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/skyron/casual-sex-friday), and original text on New Dead Families (http://newdeadfamilies.com/past/issue-8/casual-sex-friday-by-thea-zimmer/).
C(S)F was presented as part of the premiere of my transmedia opera "MelanchoLalaland™" in Miami Beach, September 2015 ( http://www.melancholalaland.com ).
Orchestral parts available on request (serious inquiries only).
Audio draft available on SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/skyron/casual-sex-friday), and original text on New Dead Families (http://newdeadfamilies.com/past/issue-8/casual-sex-friday-by-thea-zimmer/).
C(S)F was presented as part of the premiere of my transmedia opera "MelanchoLalaland™" in Miami Beach, September 2015 ( http://www.melancholalaland.com ).
Orchestral parts available on request (serious inquiries only).
Performative media--including video jamming, live and networked media collaboration, and mobile-device based performance--is reaching a critical mass in digital culture. In Experimental Media Horizons, we will examine a number of outlying practices where the materials of digital culture are beginning to coalesce, and place current activity into a broader historical and aesthetic context. Included is an overview of tech requirements and performance suggestions for developing your own course.
The formal structure of live digital media performance in this presentation is predicated on separation of functional elements of the performance. Visual and sonic aspects are each separated into background, middleground, and foreground elements, as the meme™ Jr. application is analysed.
The orchestral forces are large but extremely conservative, using no
electronics, extended techniques, or un-pitched percussion. I
used a fairly limited palette of motives, and most of the work
is absent of any kind of melodic foreground. Instrument
groups are mostly homophonic, and rarely do instruments act
on their own. There’s almost no polyphony. However, each of
the winds and some brass are allowed “cigarette solos” of a
few notes, like the bass clarinet at the very end of the piece.
Ideas generally don’t stretch beyond one or two 7/4 bars. The
work never changes its time signature, in fact.
The work is sort of a fantasy on data sonification —there’s not
an algorithm that interprets a dataset and translates it into
notation (although I’d like to do that in a future piece). But,
each 7/4 measure is based on a day between June 5 and
December 27 (2018) and how I personally “responded” to
that day. Each morning I assessed news and events of the
previous day, and also factored in any impact of local events
(i.e., things that happened to me), and then assigned the day a
number between 0 and 15 according to how terrible that day
was (0 - 3 = not so horrible, to 12 - 15 = horrific dystopian
despair, and this is all before the Covid-19 pandemic).
Most days I would throw the I Ching to get additional numerical data (and sage advice!). Once I collected all the data, I began writing the score,
starting with December 27 as the ending of the piece, and
working my way back, measure by measure, to the beginning.
I began writing this music on December 28, 2018, and
finished at the beginning in early September 2019, with edits
and a few changes throughout the rest of the year. If I threw
an I Ching a particular day, I’d use the number series from my
Hexagrams of Trichords (1985) to determine durations and
pitches. If not, I scored the work to achieve closely spaced
clusters of sounds, entering the domain of noise (or at least,
the world of sound textures reminiscent of Ligeti, Penderecki,
Xenakis, and others—not that my piece is worthy of being
included in their company, but as an homage to them).
The result is a work I am deeply ambivalent about, because it
seems to paint a pretty bleak picture, due in part to the
bombastic and banal elements I mentioned earlier. One may
also, perhaps, “characterize” this piece as “The tRiUMPh of a
propaganda(fake news)-fueled horde over science, truth,
democracy, and the individual” If that resonates with the
listener, then FakeMusic™ may actually be “useful” as a
soundtrack for someone contemplating the current state of
the world, and this Republic in particular.
—SkyRon™ (26.x.20)
This is a scan of the original manuscript of the 1987 musical score for solo piano by Joey Bargsten.
The work has yet to be given its premiere, and I welcome all interested ensembles to propose collaborative performances of the work with me and my experimental digital media ensemble, meme™.
This is also a galley-review copy, so it does not completely reflect what is actually printed in the encyclopedia, which is three volumes, bound in red leather. A beautiful addition to any library, but now almost completely irrelevant! Hooray!
I. PanGlossia™
II. Dance Nica Redux™
III. Nostalgias™
Parts available on request, serious inquiry only.
In my mind I had to time-travel to 1983 in order to work with the musical ideas from my past, uncovering what still spoke to me. This process reminded me of two cinematic nostalgias, the film by Tarkovsky and a famous scene spoken by Don Draper in Mad Men:
“Nostalgia . . . is the pain from an old wound, . . . a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. . . . It takes us to a place where we ache to go again . . .”
Electronic audio realization here: https://soundcloud.com/skyron/nostalgias-2017-semifinal-mix .
This work is now folded into my 4th Symphonyx "The Re-Branded."
Abstract (abridged):
I consider VR experiences to be post-cinematic spatial narratives or spatial conceptual artworks. This is the foundation of my sonic work in VR: to create an environment the VR participant inhabits as a means of understanding an aesthetic space textually, visually, and sonically.
This paper documents my exploration of various compositional and sonic approaches for immersing a VR participant into both narrative and conceptual space, through a set of three VR prototypes I created between 2016 and the present. Each prototype explores a particular approach to sonic immersion, and the result of each approach is an idiomatic relationship between narrative and conceptual elements within each VR environment.
Search for full text on IEEE Explore (dot) org.
Musical score includes synopsis, stage directions, tech suggestions, and further online resources. Video documentation of performance of the opera in 2015 at Miami Beach Cinematheque at https://youtu.be/8t2QKzy73kw. Complete performance of Intermezzo “Casual (Sex) Friday™” at https://soundcloud.com/skyron/casual-sex-friday .
Audio draft available on SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/skyron/casual-sex-friday), and original text on New Dead Families (http://newdeadfamilies.com/past/issue-8/casual-sex-friday-by-thea-zimmer/).
C(S)F was presented as part of the premiere of my transmedia opera "MelanchoLalaland™" in Miami Beach, September 2015 ( http://www.melancholalaland.com ).
Orchestral parts available on request (serious inquiries only).
Audio draft available on SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/skyron/casual-sex-friday), and original text on New Dead Families (http://newdeadfamilies.com/past/issue-8/casual-sex-friday-by-thea-zimmer/).
C(S)F was presented as part of the premiere of my transmedia opera "MelanchoLalaland™" in Miami Beach, September 2015 ( http://www.melancholalaland.com ).
Orchestral parts available on request (serious inquiries only).
Performative media--including video jamming, live and networked media collaboration, and mobile-device based performance--is reaching a critical mass in digital culture. In Experimental Media Horizons, we will examine a number of outlying practices where the materials of digital culture are beginning to coalesce, and place current activity into a broader historical and aesthetic context. Included is an overview of tech requirements and performance suggestions for developing your own course.
The formal structure of live digital media performance in this presentation is predicated on separation of functional elements of the performance. Visual and sonic aspects are each separated into background, middleground, and foreground elements, as the meme™ Jr. application is analysed.
The orchestral forces are large but extremely conservative, using no
electronics, extended techniques, or un-pitched percussion. I
used a fairly limited palette of motives, and most of the work
is absent of any kind of melodic foreground. Instrument
groups are mostly homophonic, and rarely do instruments act
on their own. There’s almost no polyphony. However, each of
the winds and some brass are allowed “cigarette solos” of a
few notes, like the bass clarinet at the very end of the piece.
Ideas generally don’t stretch beyond one or two 7/4 bars. The
work never changes its time signature, in fact.
The work is sort of a fantasy on data sonification —there’s not
an algorithm that interprets a dataset and translates it into
notation (although I’d like to do that in a future piece). But,
each 7/4 measure is based on a day between June 5 and
December 27 (2018) and how I personally “responded” to
that day. Each morning I assessed news and events of the
previous day, and also factored in any impact of local events
(i.e., things that happened to me), and then assigned the day a
number between 0 and 15 according to how terrible that day
was (0 - 3 = not so horrible, to 12 - 15 = horrific dystopian
despair, and this is all before the Covid-19 pandemic).
Most days I would throw the I Ching to get additional numerical data (and sage advice!). Once I collected all the data, I began writing the score,
starting with December 27 as the ending of the piece, and
working my way back, measure by measure, to the beginning.
I began writing this music on December 28, 2018, and
finished at the beginning in early September 2019, with edits
and a few changes throughout the rest of the year. If I threw
an I Ching a particular day, I’d use the number series from my
Hexagrams of Trichords (1985) to determine durations and
pitches. If not, I scored the work to achieve closely spaced
clusters of sounds, entering the domain of noise (or at least,
the world of sound textures reminiscent of Ligeti, Penderecki,
Xenakis, and others—not that my piece is worthy of being
included in their company, but as an homage to them).
The result is a work I am deeply ambivalent about, because it
seems to paint a pretty bleak picture, due in part to the
bombastic and banal elements I mentioned earlier. One may
also, perhaps, “characterize” this piece as “The tRiUMPh of a
propaganda(fake news)-fueled horde over science, truth,
democracy, and the individual” If that resonates with the
listener, then FakeMusic™ may actually be “useful” as a
soundtrack for someone contemplating the current state of
the world, and this Republic in particular.
—SkyRon™ (26.x.20)
This is a scan of the original manuscript of the 1987 musical score for solo piano by Joey Bargsten.
The work has yet to be given its premiere, and I welcome all interested ensembles to propose collaborative performances of the work with me and my experimental digital media ensemble, meme™.
This is also a galley-review copy, so it does not completely reflect what is actually printed in the encyclopedia, which is three volumes, bound in red leather. A beautiful addition to any library, but now almost completely irrelevant! Hooray!
I. PanGlossia™
II. Dance Nica Redux™
III. Nostalgias™
Parts available on request, serious inquiry only.
In my mind I had to time-travel to 1983 in order to work with the musical ideas from my past, uncovering what still spoke to me. This process reminded me of two cinematic nostalgias, the film by Tarkovsky and a famous scene spoken by Don Draper in Mad Men:
“Nostalgia . . . is the pain from an old wound, . . . a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. . . . It takes us to a place where we ache to go again . . .”
Electronic audio realization here: https://soundcloud.com/skyron/nostalgias-2017-semifinal-mix .
This work is now folded into my 4th Symphonyx "The Re-Branded."
FakeMusic™ is at times banal and bombastic. The orchestral forces are large but extremely conservative, using no electronics, extended techniques, or un-pitched percussion. I used a fairly limited palette of motives, and most of the work is absent of any kind of melodic foreground. Instrument groups are mostly homophonic, and rarely do instruments act on their own. There's almost no polyphony. However, each of the winds and some brass are allowed "cigarette solos" of a few notes, like the bass clarinet at the very end of the piece. Ideas generally don't stretch beyond one or two 7/4 bars. The work never changes its time signature, in fact.