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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Office of Communications
Stanhope Hall
Princeton, New Jersey 08544-5264
Telephone 609-258-3601; Fax 609-258-1301Contact: Wayne Wolf 609/258-1424
Date: March 18, 1998
e-mail: wolf@ee.princeton.edu
Speaker Hears Art through Technology
Princeton, N.J. -- Computer musician Neil B. Rolnick, chairman of the Arts Department and director of the iEAR Studios at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, will be the first speaker in the Series in New Media, which is intended to encourage interdisciplinary interest in new media.
Sponsored by Wayne Wolf, professor of electrical engineering in Princeton University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Series in New Media will host speakers who will discuss different multimedia venues being explored and used. Rolnick will focus on the evolution of his approach for using technology in his musical composition, performance, and teaching.
''I plan to play some examples of my work and discuss how my developing attitudes have been reflected in the Electronics Arts Program at Renesselaer's ''EAR Studios,'' Rolnick said. His talk, titled Hearing the Art Through the Technology, will be held at 4:30 p.m., Monday, March 23, 1998, in Room 104 of the Computer Science Building on Olden Street. The public is invited.
Multimedia research incorporates the expertise of authors, programmers, scriptors, designers, graphic artists, animators, audio and video technicians, educators, marketers, advertisers, and hardware and software developers. The Series in New Media will provide a forum for technicians, creatives, decision makers, educators, and students to share ideas and learn from each other.
''Multimedia research is taking place in campus laboratories other than just those in the E-Quad,'' Wolf said. ''We need to get researchers talking to each other and exchanging ideas. We have to understand both the tools used to create the content and the content itself to maximize the potential of multimedia.''
Rolnick has been active as a composer and performer of computer music since the late 1970s. He performs on a portable computer music system, and concertizes regularly in a wide variety of contexts. He has appeared as featured soloist with ensembles such as Dogs of Desire, The California E.A.R. Unit, Rel=E2che, Gerard Schwarz's Music Today Ensemble, Musical Elements, Gamelan Son of Lion, and the Albany Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with video artists John Sturgeon, Patricia Abt, and John J.A. Jannone; with filmmakers Sandy Moore and Barbara Hammer; and with writers Ed Sanders and Larry Beinhart.
In recent years Mr. Rolnick has toured extensively with performances in New York City, Tokyo, London, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Washington, Reykjavik, Zurich, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Banff , Canada; and numerous other venues. His music was included in the 1994 Barber Festival in England; in the 1990 Aspen Music Festival; in the 1985, 1986, and 1990 New Music America Festivals; and in the 1985 Whitney Biennial Exhibition. Rolnick's eleventh compact disk recording, Rico Songs & Interludes, will be released on the Albany Records label in early 1998. The CD includes music for voices and amplified chamber orchestra, a series of works for improvising chamber ensemble, and a series of new solo performance pieces.
In 1994, along with Albany Symphony Orchestra music director David Alan Miller, Dr. Rolnick was co-founder of the new 'multimedia orchestra of the future,'' Dogs of Desire. In the fall of that year, he was in residence at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in northern Italy. From September 1995 through February 1996, Dr. Rolnick spent five months in Japan on a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council. During 1994-95 he created and premiered HomeGame, a full evening length performance work for actors, instruments, interactive video, and computer mediated story generation. For the entire 1996-97 season, Rolnick's improvisational chamber ensemble, Fish Love That, presented monthly concerts in New York City. The group explores the convergence of composed music and multimedia improvisation in an ongoing performance format.
He earned a bachelor's degree in English literature from Harvard in 1969. He studied musical composition with Darius Milhaud at the Aspen Music School, with John Adams and Andrew Imbrie at the San Francisco Conservatory, and with Richard Felciano and Olly Wilson at the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D. in musical composition in 1980. He studied computer music at Stanford with John Chowning and James A. Moorer, and worked as a researcher at IRCAM in Paris, France, from 1977 to 1979. In the fall of 1989 Dr. Rolnick was composer-in-residence at the Music Academy, University of the Arts, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, on a Fulbright Grant. As part of his residency, he performed concerts of his music throughout Yugoslavia.
He currently is Chair of the Arts Department and directs the iEAR Studios at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, NY. At Rensselaer he has directed the creation of a unique Master of Fine Arts program in Electronic Arts, which focuses on a truly integrated approach to time-based art and performance with the electronic media.