Seth Cluett’s work ‘forms of forgetting’ is a series of performances, each building on the last, that explores the role of in-attention and re-attending in listening. Using found objects, field recordings, and home-made instruments, sounds migrates from amplification through foley replication to sound synthesis. Putting pressure on the veracity of the real, this work aims to construct a focused, attentive perceptual space with an elastic, malleable experience of time.

Artist Biography:

Seth Cluett is an artist and composer whose work ranges from photography and drawing to video, sound installation, concert music, and critical writing. His “subtle…seductive, immersive” (Artforum) work has been characterized as “rigorously focused and full of detail” (e/i) and “dramatic, powerful, and at one with nature” (The Wire). Exploring the territory between the senses, Cluett’s works are marked by a detailed attention to perception and to the role of sound in the creation of a sense of place, the workings of memory, and the experience of time. His research interests and critical writings investigate embodied cognition, sound in virtual and augmented reality, the media history of the loudspeaker, the history and documentation of sound in art practice, and architectural acoustics.

His work has been presented internationally at institutions and festivals such as Kill Your Timid Notion at Dundee Contemporary Arts in Scotland; the Ars Electronica Festival and Alte Schmiede in Vienna; the 10th Rencontres Internationales, Palais de Tokyo, Main d’Oeuvres, and GRM in Paris; Hebbel am Ufer Theater and Staalplaat in Berlin; the Osage Art Foundation/October Contemporary in Hong Kong; The Whitney Museum, MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, Issue Project Room, Eyebeam, and Audio Visual Arts in New York; the Institute for Contemporary Art, Non-Event, and Mobius Artist Space in Boston; the Betty Rymer, Heaven, Artemisia, and Deadtech Galleries in Chicago; as well as Swarm Gallery in Oakland, CA and the Deep Listening Space in Kingston, NY. He has participated in dance and theater works with DD Dorvillier/Human Future Dance Corp, Stephen Petronio Company, Helene Lesterin/Atlas Dance, and Jen Mesch.

Cluett has published book chapters for MIT Press and Rowman & Littlefield, articles for Tacet Revue, BYPASS, Shifter, Intransitive, The Open Space Magazine, Leonardo Music Journal, 306090, Earshot, and the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and his work is documented on Errant Bodies Press, Line, Radical Matters, Sedimental, Crank Satori, BoxMedia, Stasisfield, and Winds Measure Recordings. The recipient of grants and awards from The Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Fund, Meet the Composer as well as the Andrew W. Mellon, Naumberg, and Malcolm Morse Foundations, he holds a BM in music composition from the New England Conservatory of Music, an MFA in electronic art from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a doctorate in music composition with a graduate certificate in Media & Modernity Studies from Princeton University. Cluett has served on the faculty of Miami University of Ohio, Ramapo College, and the Stevens Institute of Technology, and is now Artist-in-Residence in Experiments in Art & Technology at Nokia Bell Labs as well as Acting Director of the Computer Music Center and Assistant Director of the Sound Art Program at Columbia University.

This concert is part of The Nature of Sound: Mini-Festival. The Nature of Sound is a series exploring the diverse sound worlds of contemporary music. The three concerts present American composer-performers renowned for their inventive and virtuosic artistic practices in electronic and acoustic composition, sound art, and improvisation.

Cosponsors: The Reiner Center for Contemporary Music, Columbia University; Columbia Global Centers | Paris; Department of Music, Columbia University; Columbia University Club of France; Columbia Undergraduate Programs in Paris.