Joanna Mattrey: POV: Simulation with Dr. Graham Walker

Wed 09 Jun, 2021, 8pm
Streaming on this webpage and Vimeo


ISSUE's 2021 season programs are FREE to stream. In lieu of purchasing tickets, please consider making a $25 suggested donation (or an amount that you feel is meaningful) in support of ISSUE's Artist-In-Residence programs and Artist Fund. Enabling the fullscreen function is recommended. The length of this piece is approximately 33 minutes.



Click Here for more information about the piece and Dr. Walker's digital synesthesia.



Wednesday, June 9th at 8pm EST, violist Joanna Mattrey continues her 2021 ISSUE residency with the premiere of POV: Simulation, a digitally induced synesthesia experience created in collaboration with physicist Dr. Graham Walker. Using the frequencies of Mattrey’s soundscape, Dr. Walker translates each sound into its mathematically corresponding color, to gain insight into the minute changes of overtones and subtones within Mattrey's performance. Combining this process with video footage (recorded at Fridman Gallery in the Lower East Side, New York), POV: Simulation forges a digital pathway through Mattrey’s compositions.

Compositions by Joanna Mattrey
Cosmol digital rendering by Dr. Graham Walker

Joanna Mattrey is a Brooklyn-based violist working in free improvisation, new music, and classical music. She uses extended techniques, modern compositional approaches, and electronic alterations to challenge the conventions of the viola. Drawing on her certifications in Alexander Technique, and Yoga, and an interest in Martial Arts, Joanna creates an embodied performance practice centered on ceremony and ritual. Her debut solo album, ‘Veiled,’ (Relative Pitch Records, 2020) explores the extreme sonic possibilities for viola and upcoming releases for Notice Recordings, Tripticks Tapes, Dear Life Recs, and Relative Pitch Records will include world premieres from her solo commissioning project, collaborative projects, and solo improvisations. Festival performances include Newport Jazz Festival, NYC Winter Jazz Fest, Lima Jazz Festival*, SxSW, and New Ear Festival. Residencies include Banff’s Composition Lab, MoMa PS1’s ALLGOLD, The Floor. Joanna has a B.A. in viola performance from the New England Conservatory (2009).

Dr. Walker is a faculty member of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Manhattan College, and he works in the field of systems engineering. This has included research in the areas of control, instrumentation, signal processing, and acoustics. This has allowed him to marry issues associated with system dynamics and sound control, which goes back to his Ph.D. work where he studies the effect that blast waves have on surrounding structures.

ISSUE Project Room's annual Artist-in-Residence program provides New York-based emerging artists with a year of support, offering artists access to facilities, equipment, documentation, pr/marketing, curatorial and technical expertise to develop and present significant new works, reach the next stage in their artistic development, and gain exposure to a broad public audience.

ISSUE Project Room programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. ISSUE gratefully acknowledges additional 2021 Spring/Summer Season support from The Howard Gilman Foundation, TD Charitable Foundation and Metabolic Studio (a direct charitable activity of the Annenberg Foundation).