TROY, NY – The Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) presents the 2023 “iEAR Salon” virtual speaker series, exploring relationships between minds, bodies, the virtual spaces humans enact and inhabit, and our planet in crisis. Curated by the Arts Graduate Colloquium of RPI. Mutli-disciplinary artists, musicians, and thinkers address topics from embodied improvisation to technologies of the human corpse; from eco-critical approaches to art history to video games as responses to ecological chaos; and from speculative design to participatory sense-making.
OCTOBER 11 - Wadada Leo Smith
presented by Manuel J. Perez III
Time: 12-1pm
Location: Virtual
Inspiration, Artistic Dreaming, and a Reflective Vision on Making Art in the Present Moment
Wadada Leo Smith is a multi-instrumentalist, improviser, composer, author, Faculty Emeritus at CalArts, and member of the seminal Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. His contributions to music, improvisation, and art span 50 years of diverse creative, pedagogical, and research activity. First published as Notes (8 Pieces) Source a New World Music: Creative Music (Kiom Press, 1973), Smith’s socioculturally-oriented music philosophy, Creative Music, continues to influence improvisation communities around the world with its radical concern for embodied improvisation. As a Creative Musician, Smith has released over 100 albums of improvised and composed music and has received numerous performances of his compositions internationally for over 20 years. He was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his multi-evening-length composition collection Ten Freedom Summers, (Defining Moments in the History of the United States of America), the culmination of his creative research into the civil rights movement. https://www.wadadaleosmith.com/
Please join us for this virtual series of vital presentations followed by brief question and answer sessions. Each presentation is free to the public.
REGISTER: (A confirmation email will include a Zoom link.)
iEAR Salon is sponsored by iEAR Presents! and the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at RPI, and is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.