AN AUDIO-VISUAL EXPERIENCE
about us
DILATE ENSEMBLE is an audio-visual collective featuring:
Carole Kim (S. California): visual arts/installations
Gloria Damijan (Austria): multi-instrumentalist
Scott L. Miller (Minnesota): electronics
Luisa Muhr (New York/Austria): voice
Jon Raskin (N. California): sax/reeds/percussion+
our history:
Seeking to find ways to still connect with other performers during a pandemic, the members of Dilate Ensemble met while participating in the NowNet Arts Lab Ensemble led by Sarah Weaver. As a satellite to this ensemble we dove into an exploration of how we might be able to engage in audio/visual improvisation online.
Installation artist Carole Kim and founder of Dilate Ensemble has compressed her work in video installation to fit beneath her kitchen table. This intimate live "venue" provides an illusionistic physical space that readily accommodates a convergence of online live presence.
The four musicians of the ensemble, Gloria Damijan, Scott L. Miller, Luisa Muhr and Jon Raskin, work with Kim’s live visuals in a form of an interactive improvisation-based dialogue, as never quite seen before.
We collaboratively develop our work, which involves a shared visual element delivered over Zoom. We use Netty-McNetface to mix the audio in Scott L. Miller's studio, where he individually processed the various audio tracks in Kyma, which is then monitored by the ensemble in Netty. We use Netty/Zoom/OBS to produce a live a-v work that is streamed to YouTube/Facebook/Zoom as preferred by the venue.
By embracing the latent nature of telematic performance, the ensemble has developed an artistic practice that is idiomatic to the venue of networked audio-visual art.
excerpts of our work:
our guests & collaborators:
Paul Chavez (S. California): guitar, electronics
Shinichi Iove-Koga (Switzerland): dance
upcoming projects
DILATE ENSEMBLE in NoCal!
Oct 19: Montalvo Arts Center/CCRMA-Stanford University
closing performance, Saratoga
Oct 20: Center for New Music, SF
Oct 21: CNMAT, UC-Berkeley
Carole Kim (SoCal): live visuals, media installation
Scott L. Miller (Minnesota): Kyma, electronics
Luisa Muhr (New York): voice, movement
Jon Raskin (NoCal): sax, concertina, recycled materials
plus guest Oguri (SoCal): dance
Dilate Ensemble is an audio-visual collaborative group that formed at the top of the
pandemic. The audio-reactive visual worlds created by Carole Kim and a recursive
algorithmic audio ecosystem by Scott Miller provide a contextual framework where
the sensitive synchronicity of the moment associated with in-person improvisation bridges
remote, local and hybrid spaces.
For this mini-tour of northern CA, four Dilate Ensemble members* (in the same location)
will be joined by Body Weather Laboratory dancer Oguri for a compelling
integrated media performance.
*Gloria will be there in spirit + sound samples!
We are also currently looking for presenters and/or venues for bookings in the New Year.
We work I a hybrid setting, as well as fully in-person or virtually.
our biographies
Carole Kim is a media artist with a focus on video projection for multimedia installation, performance and photography. She has a very hands-on, tactile approach to the materials she works with, pushing the moving image to take on optical, spatial and dimensional form. Her work has been presented in a wide range of contexts including experimental music, theater, art, dance and site-specific installation. She is grateful for an ever-expanding community of collaborators across disciplines energized by a process of exploration in the moment. www.carole.kim
Gloria Damijan studied piano and music pedagogy at Music University Vienna with a focus on contemporary music and free improvisation. She has studied with Manon-Lìu Winter, Burkhard Stangl, Franz Hautzinger and Ian Pace and collaborated with Stefan Fraunberger, Vinzenz Schwab, Klaus Filip, Arnold 'Noid' Haberl, Christine Schörkhuber and Ye Hui. Working together with composers Tamara Friebel, Margareta Ferek-Petric, Veronika Mayer,Matthias Kranebitter. Damijan has performed in Vienna, Graz, Innsbruck, Berlin, Barcelona, Lisboa, Porto, Oslo, Hamburg and is a member of the Viennese Improvisers-Network snim. gloriadamijan.wixsite.com/website
Minnesota composer and electronic musician Scott L. Miller is described as a creator of ‘high adventure avant garde music of the best sort’ (Classical-Modern Music Review). Best known for his electroacoustic chamber music and ecosystemic performance pieces, his music is characterized by collaborative approaches to composition, exploring performer/computer improvisation, and re-imagining ancient compositional processes through the lens of 21st century technology. He is a Professor of Music at St. Cloud State University and Director of Recordings for the Society of Electro-Acoustic Music in the U.S. (SEAMUS).
Luisa Muhr is a multi-lingual, multi- and interdisciplinary performer, improvisor, director, installation artist, sound artist, and theater maker, originally from Vienna (Austria), lives and works in New York, and is at home in the experimental/avant-garde. As a performer she specializes in performance, vocal, movement, installation, sound, and theater arts. Amongst many projects and commissions she is currently developing an opera with six-times Grammy winner Arturo O’Farrill, and has been commissioned by the Austrian Cultural Forum NY and Roulette Intermedium to create two new interdisciplinary installation pieces. www.luisamuhr.com
Jon Raskin has been a member of Rova Saxophone Quartet for the last 43 years exploring the relationship of improvisation and composition, developing and honing the language of ensemble music and researching linguistic possibilities of the saxophone. He has performed and/ or recorded with Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Sam Rivers, Tim Berne, Phillip Johnston, Leo Smith, Frank Gratkowsi, Phillip Greenlief and Henry Kaiser. www.jonraskin.com