Futures & Faults: New Compositions by Matthew Creer & Adam Fong

Composer-performers Matthew B. Creer and Adam Fong present a shared program of new music for voice, bass, and computers, with visual media including animation and found video. They’ll perform at TAC: Temescal Art Center in Oakland on Friday, August 23, and at Center for New Music in San Francisco on Wednesday, August 28.

Fong will premiere two works from an ongoing research and performance project exploring Chinese-American mining and migration. With a nod to the obsessions of many Californians, Fong’s Automated Fault Extraction draws inspiration from modern-day advancements in seismic analysis. The resulting piece explores low-frequency harmonic interaction, and is scored for two performers, one on electric bass and electronics, and another on electronics only. Fong will also perform a solo work for bass and electronics, Specific Gravity, that tries its best to make light of truly heavy historical practices (and their contemporary equivalents) like hydraulic mining and tax-based exclusion.

Creer will present selections from Legends of the Future, a songbook of brief sound narratives with contrapuntal video including found footage and animations by the composer, both fixed and live/real-time. The stories range from absurd to fantastical; selections include “Tigerman,” and “Vanity Plate,” about a robot archaeologist visiting the DMV to study human behavior through license plate applications. Other new works by Creer to be premiered include “Tiffany” from his Pink Mirror series.Fong and Creer will perform in their own, and each other’s compositions.

Friday, August 23, 2019 at TAC: Temescal Art Center, Oakland
Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at Center for New Music, San Francisco