ISSUE Project Room celebrates the 20th Anniversary of its Artists-In-Residence (AIR) program throughout 2026 with performances by current residents and returning alumni. This anniversary season highlights AIRs whose work reflects the ongoing evolution of a much broader community of experimental artists who have helped shape ISSUE for over twenty years.
Thursday, February 5th, at 8pm, the organization presents The Density of Air, a new composition by 2009 AIR Tristan Perich, written for solo clarinet with a multitude of small speakers placed throughout ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Pl. theater. Performed by 2024 AIR Katie Porter, the collaboration reflects the shared sensibilities of two artists whose practices engage simple forms and complex systems. Whether it’s Perich’s binary, 1-bit electronics or Porter’s spiraling graphic scores, both artists’ celebrate the elegant simplicity of physics and nature.
Tristan Perich's (New York) work is inspired by the aesthetic simplicity of math, physics and code. The WIRE Magazine describes his compositions as "an austere meeting of electronic and organic." 1-Bit Music, his 2004 release on Cantaloupe Music, was the first album ever released as a microchip, programmed to synthesize his electronic composition live. His follow-up release, 1-Bit Symphony, was called "sublime" (New York Press), and the Wall Street Journal said "its oscillations have an intense, hypnotic force and a surprising emotional depth." More recently, Drift Multiply (Nonesuch, New Amsterdam), for 50 violins and 50 speakers, was described by the New York Times as "a constantly evolving landscape where sounds coalesce and prism, where the violins both pull into focus and blur into a soothing ether." His work coupling 1-bit electronics with traditional forms in both music and visual art has been presented around the world, from Sonar and Ars Electronica to the Museum of Modern Art and bitforms gallery.
Katie Porter is a clarinetist, performer/composer, writer, and artist. Her work is rooted in decades of experimental and community performance practices, where she explores how music can exist almost like landscapes or relationships, slowly altering our ability to perceive change, time, and space. Her debut solo bass clarinet album: Conversation No. 1/ Collecting Rocks from the Places We’ve Been (2025, Relative Pitch Records) is called “a revelation” by the Brooklyn Rail, and named “Best Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp Aug 2025”. Devoted to collaboration, Katie performs as Phase to Phase (with Lucio Capece), Eternities (with Bob Bellerue), MUD (with Anne Penders), MOONS (with Christine Tavolacci, Laura Cetilia, and Judith Berkson), among many other projects. Katie is recording a multi-year project for solo clarinet in Nancy Holt's land artwork, Sun Tunnels, in the remote Utah desert, her writings are published in Sound American, and her recent creative work can be heard in Brooklyn’s ISSUE Project Room archive, where she was 2024 Artist-in-Residence. She splits her time between New York and Utah with her three children.
