FETA Prize in Sound Art 2015 Awarded to Bryan Jacobs
With 42 blind submissions from 5 countries in the Americas, Bryan Jacobs is selected as the 2015 winner of the FETA Prize in Sound Art for his work Subwhistle.
The FETA Prize in Sound Art was established in 2013 to promote a broad range of contemporary American sound and installation arts. In the third edition, we received 42 submissions from artists residing in Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico and the US. Through a two-stage blindfold evaluation process, the judges Ted Apel, Betsey Biggs, Abinadi Meza and Stephan Moore selected a small pool of finalists: Adam Basanta’s The Sound of Empty Space, Myriam Bleau’s Soft Revolvers, Sky Macklay’s Harmonibots, Navid Nahab’s Practices of Everyday Life| Cooking, Nolan Lem’s HiveMind and Bryan Jacobs’s Subwhistle. Our honorable master judge John Driscoll then selected the winning work Subwhistle by Bryan Jacobs. In addition to a 1,000 USD monetary prize, the writer Michelle Aldredge will profile Bryan Jacobs and his work in the Gwarlingo online magazine.
About Subwhistle:
« Subwhistle uses low frequency sound to play slide whistles. Displaced air from each of 4 subwoofers is directed into the whistles’ mouthpieces. The air oscillates at the frequency of the speaker, usually between 10 and 30 hertz.
All the sound we hear in this video is generated acoustically from the slide whistles. The low rumblings of the subwoofers can occasionally be heard. The resulting sound is somewhere between chirping birds and analogue synths. The pitch of each whistle is fixed however they can be tuned by the amplitude of the subwoofers. The installation cycles through five randomly selected previously composed sequences. This work is one in a series of computer-controlled instrument, autonomous sound sculptures. » BJ
About Bryan Jacobs:
Bryan Jacobs is a sound artist and composer based in New York City. His music has been performed by ensembles such as the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, The McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble, Wet Ink, International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Pamplemousse, and defunensemble. He has had performances at Festival Ai-maako (Chile), La Muse en Festival (Paris, France), Festival Archipel (Geneva, Switzerland), Musica nova (Helsinki, Finland), MATA festival, St. John’s Church (Limerick), Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and others. His acoustic and electroacoustic compositions have earned him national and international awards and scholarships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Bourges International Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art competition, Centre for Computational Musicology and Computer Music, RTÉ Lyric FM, and McGill University among others. He has participated in residencies at La Muse en Circuit in Paris and Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe, Germany. He has performed his own compositions for guitar and electronics at the Stone (NYC), Miller Theater (NYC), and the Wulf (LA). In addition to his artistic endeavors, Bryan is the co-founder of Qubit, a New York based new music initiative that presents mostly emerging artists whose work involves creative uses of technology.
For images, video and additional information about Subwhistle, please visit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7wKJu_4geo
http://bryanjacobsmusic.com/subwhistle.html
For more information about the FETA prize in Sound Art, please visit our website: http://www.fetafoundation.org or contact Spencer Topel.
With the support of Foundation of Emerging Technologies and Arts, Harold Golen Gallery, Gwarlingo and the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners.