Oli's Dream

For piano, stereo sound and live computer projection

2008 · 6m

Oli’s Dream is a playful collaboration between music and writing, between a piano keyboard and a typewriter keyboard, and, above all, between a composer and a poet. When composer Jaroslaw Kapuscinski and poet Camille Norton began talking about the rapport between music and poetry, they discovered that as children they had shared the same dream, the dream in which a piano becomes a typewriter and in which a typewriter becomes a piano. Oli’s Dream is therefore an experiment in synaesthesia, an attempt to fuse the temporal modes of music with the spatial and temporal domains of words. In the process, the audience finds itself in the presence of a perceptive, purely aware being, Oli, who creates himself through his encounter with words. Words here make and unmake themselves from the outside in or the inside out, transforming themselves as they discover their own direction in time. As Oli’s Dream unfolds in the interstices between listening to sound and reading letters on a screen, it moves into the additional spatial, visual, and temporal dimensions of live performance, enacted here by the pianist engaging in a call and response with letters, words and music.

Awards

2014
- Finalist, Fresh Minds Festival, Texas A&M University

Premiere

2008
- Narrativity in Music, Time of Music Festival, Viitasaari, Finland

Recordings

2011
- Juicy, DVD produced at EMPAC, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY for Everglade Records

Presentations

upcoming
- Fresh Minds Festival, Texas A&M University, TX
- Shanghai Conservatory of Music, China
- Sydney Conservatory of Music, Australia
- New Zealand School of Music, Wellington, New Zealand
- Department of Music, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
- Department of Music, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
- 12 Nights, Harold Gollen Gallery, Miami, FL
2008
- Animator: International Festival of Animation, Poznan, Poland
2009
- Seeing Sound Symposium, Bath Spa University, UK
- Re-new Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Field of Vision, Festival of Animation and New Media, Torun, Poland
2010
- Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival, University of Richmond, Virginia
- Visible Bits, Audible Bytes Symposium, DeMontfort University, Leicester, UK
- Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC), Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland
- SEAMUS Conference, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN
- The Pianist in the 21st Century, 9th Annual New Music Festival, Cal State Fullerton, CA
- Campbell Recital Hall, Stanford University, CA
- iotaSalon, The iotaCenter, UCLA Design | Media Arts Department, Los Angeles, CA
2011
- School of Art, Design, and Media, Nanyang Polytechnic University, Singapore
- Wayward Music Series, Chapel Performance Space, Seattle, WA
- Understanding Visual Music Symposium, Hexagram, Concordia, Montréal, Canada
- International Computer Music Conference, Huddersfield, UK
- San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
- Animator: International Festival of Animation, Poznan, Poland
- Black and White Festival, Porto, Portugal
- Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, troy, NY
- NoiseBorder, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada
- Sonic Diasporas Alumni Festival, University of California, San Diego, CA
- SoundImageSound Festival, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA
2012
- School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong
2013
- Oxford University, Faculty of Music, UK
- Sommets du Cinéma d’Animation, Cinémathèque québécoise, Montreal, Canada
- University of California, Irvine - Symposium (February)
- University of North Texas, USA
- “Codes” Festival, Lublin, Poland
- Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University, USA
- University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA
2014
- Fresh Minds Festival, Texas A&M University (video version)
2015
- Tokyo University for Arts and Music, Japan
- Senzoku Gakuen College of Music, Tokyo, Japan
- 12 Nights of Electronic Music, Bakehouse Arts Complex, Miami, FL
- Department of Music, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
- Berkeley Arts Festival
2016
- Le Poisson Rouge, NY (Jenny Q Chai)
- Shanghai, Steinway Hall, China (Jenny Q Chai)
- New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (Video version)
2017
- Cité internationale des arts, Paris (Jenny Q Chai)