artist statement work

I got in to this work first through formal music study, then by a realization that jazz school was far too limiting and that I had much wider interests I needed to explore before committing to a course of intense study.

When my work is going well, I feel thrilled. I feel powerful. I feel like an explorer discovering something new. I have the sense of uncovering something that already existed.

I am comfortable with the tension between formal study, honing of specific techniques, and the absolute open-endedness of forgeing one's own path. I want to do both. I have a deep respect for tradition, and the value of deep artistic lineage. However, I believe that we are living in a time when artistic lineage is less and less important, and artists are both able and required to choose from among a wide range of artistic lines.

Things I'm not interested in: overtly referencing popular culture, emphasis on process over aesthetics, symbolism.

While much of my toolkit is derived from popular, or folk music forms and easthetics, I consider my work neither a comment on these styles, nor a permutation of them. I prefer, rather, to think of myself as an appropriator, borrowing tools from an array of traditions and using them to explor ideas of my own.

While I don't consider my approach strictly minimalist, I strive to create work which depends on a minimum of recognizable influences, and references a minimum of elements exterior to the work itself, without becoming either austere or severe. One major way I exert maximum ownership over my work, as well as imposing a limit on the range of tools and techniques I work with, is by building my own software. By taking control over the lowest levels of my process, I'm able to create work which I feel I have complete ownership of. This is important to me, especially when using such an open-ended meta-tool as a computer, a device with which many people mistake the learning and acquisition of new software for creative work.

My approach is more aesthetic, visionary and exploratory than expressive. While my ultimate goal is to create fascinating, delightful, beautiful, and deeply satisfying art, my work is not a manifestation of a mood, an emotional state, a feeling any more than the work of a chef is. While some of my work may tend elicit certain emotions, I don't consider it a representation of such a state.

1. What is your favorite tool? Why?

My favorite tool is the computer language. It gives me unlimited potential, but a very limited tool-box. It encourages imagination, and discourages too-browsing.


2. What is your favorite material? Why?

I generally prefer recorded, organic sounds. I think that the richness of the physical world creates more pleasing building blocks than the precision of the computer. However, I'm no purist about this, I simply find sound-worlds with a little grit in them more satisfying.


3. What do you like best about what you do?

I wouldn't know how to stop. Put most simply, what I like best about what I do is the way my music makes me feel. It feels fresh and new to me, a bit like other things, but very clearly its own thing, and it's created exactly for me, to my own very exacting specifications. There may be other music which is more dazzling, more exciting, more impressive, but there's no other music which is so well tailored to my own sensabilities. Other things I like are: the triumph of creation, the way my work allows me to meet like-minded people all over the world, and the discipline of developing the various skills I employ.

4. What do you mean when you say that a piece has turned out really well?

It makes me feel good to listen to it, it embodies a few interesting ideas, and it sounds like nothing else.


5. What patterns emerge in your work? Is there a pattern in the way you select materials? In the way you use color, texture or light?
6. What do you do differently from the way you were taught? Why?
7. What is your favorite color? List three qualities of the color. Consider that these qualities apply to your work.