One System

Thursday, March 27, 2025 at 7:00pm
Ring Family Performing Arts Hall

Free and open to the public.

Professor of Music and Director of Graduate Studies Paula Matthusen presents "One System," an evening of shiny, silver-clad spectacle with laughing, licking, flutes, plants, electronics, and love, featuring the trio of Alex Lough '13, Margaret Lancaster, and Juraj Kojs performing real life and AI-inspired electroacoustic music.

The evening opens with the audiovisual work winged for the takeoff of submergence co-created by Malia Detar Cheung '25 and Peter V. Swendsen. An exploration of immersion and physicalities, the work engages the natural environment as a participatory collaborator, drawing on techniques of site-specific choreography, contact improvisation, and soundscape composition to articulate a relational exchange of expression and reception. Nola Iwasaki’s “Poem from the River, Alsea” serves as the point of departure for the piece, which was filmed in the McDonald Research Forest, just northwest of Corvallis, Oregon. For thousands of years, this forest was home to the Kalapuya people, who are now members of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. The musical score features performances by Myra Hinrichs (violin), Helen Newby (cello), Carrie Frey (viola), Dan King (percussion), and Jennifer Torrence (percussion).