Living Inside Design, Mikel Rouse Friday, March 27 8:30 p.m. in the Watson Room Award-winning performer MIKEL ROUSE, whose digital opera, Dennis Cleveland, will open Off-Broadway this year, presents Living Inside Design, a solo performance with digital films by CLIFF BALDWIN. Living Inside Design 1. Never Forget A Face 2. I Might Never Give Up 3. Kiss Him Goodbye Pause for Reflection 4. The American Dream, God Out Of Control WhiteBlackYellowBat from The End Of Cinematics 5. Left In My Life 6. Light From A Trailer
About Tonight's Performance:
Living Inside Design (1994) began as a series of vocal counterpoint studies that would later be fully realized in the operas Falling Kansas, Dennis Cleveland, and The End of Cinematics. It was then expanded into a solo performance and collaboration between Mr. Rouse and Cliff Baldwin, utilizing elaborately synchronized computer generated "digital films." A work rarely performed in the U.S., tonight's performance has been updated to include new digital films and selections from Mr. Rouse's most recent opera, The End of Cinematics, which is scheduled to premiere in the fall of 1999 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. Rouse's work has long been at the forefront of technological innovation, from Quorom (1984), the first piece of its kind for drum computer sequencer, to Dennis Cleveland, a truly "interactive" piece.
MIKEL ROUSE is an avant garde composer born in 1957 in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Kansas City Art Institute and the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri. He moved to New York City in 1979, and formed his contemporary chamber ensemble, Mikel Rouse Broken Consort, with whom he produced recordings including Soul Menu (1993), A Lincoln Portrait (1988); and A Walk in the Woods (1985). Rouse began work on his multimedia opera trilogy in 1989. Failing Kansas (1994), inspired by Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, premiered at The Kitchen in New York; Dennis Cleveland (1995), based entirely on the set of a television talk show, will premiere off-Broadway this year; and The End of Cinematics (1996) will be presented at the BAM Next Wave Festival in 1998. Rouse has received numerous awards from Meet The Composer, The New York State Council on the Arts, and ASCAP. In 1994, he was nominated for the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, and in 1996, he received an Edward F. Albee Fellowship.
CLIFF BALDWIN is a word artist, designer, sculptor and filmmaker. He lives and works in Aquebogue, NY and New York City. He has exhibited in Tokyo, Berlin, Mexico City, Los Angeles and New York. His work is in numerous collections including The Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Art Center, The Museum of The Art Institute of Chicago and The Museum of Rhode Island School of Design.
He is currently an Adjunct Professor at Pratt Institute's Graduate Communications Design Program in New York City. TYPE[aslife]STYLE , a solo exhibition and word installation, is currently on view at Pratt Institute's 4th floor Gallery at the Puck Building in New York.
"When we talk about technology, most people think 'computers and the lnternet.' As with television, the medium takes precedence over the message. In rushing to claim the latest innovation, too often these days you see the technology at work. If it's a good painting, chances are you don't notice the paint." - Mikel Rouse