Our first Elastro series of the year features the visiting duo of Andrea Parkins + Eliad Wagner, and a solo presentation from Zouning Anne Liao. Andrea Parkins’ and Eliad Wagner’s electroacoustic duo tumbles through a thicket of sonic densities, fusing sounding objects — a sliver of stone, a bell on a string, a spring in a chamber — with electronic tones, rhythms, and noise. The artists focus on gesture as a foundation for composition and improvisation — shaping their music through haptic interaction, careful listening, and the spontaneous “invention of instruments” through playful engagement with their materials.

Zouning Anne Liao will present two fixed media pieces this evening. First is Dust Storm (6 minutes) inspired by the chaotic energy and fine particulate detail of a dust storm. Dust storms are violent yet mesmerizing phenomena—walls of wind-borne earth that reshape both landscape and perception. This piece evokes their inherent duality: the overwhelming, kinetic turbulence they unleash and the microscopic precision of the dust itself, suspended and endlessly shifting. On a metaphorical level, the work reflects on erosion—not only of land, but of memory, identity, and form. As in a dust storm, boundaries blur. Sound becomes sediment. Structure is worn down until only traces remain.

Originally composed for 7th order ambisonics, it is reconfigure to 16 channels for the Elastic Arts space here.

Second is States of Water, i. Prologue (5 minutes), composed for fixed electronics and video by Zouning Anne Liao. Prologue, the opening movement of this work invites the listener into a immersive and magnified world— one in which the familiar substance of water becomes both material and metaphor. While the piece is rooted in the observable states of water, it approaches them in an abstract and imaginative way: not as literal depictions, but as points of departure from which sound and image can drift, distort, and transform.

States of Water was commissioned by Bowdoin College’s Center for Experimental Media Arts (CEMA). The video is designed specifically for CEMA’s state-of-the-art 180-degree curved projection screen, with a resolution of 5000 × 1200.

Join us Saturday January 10th!

$15 / $10 w/ Student ID – Tickets Available at the Door

Artist Bios

Andrea Parkins is a composer, sound artist, and electroacoustic musician who engages with electronics as both material and interactive process. Working with an array of sonic elements – amplified drawing tools, objects and surfaces; electronic feedback, custom-built software, and electronic and acoustic instruments – her work explores slippages and connections between the body, material, sound, site, and space.

Parkins’ work encompasses electroacoustic composition and performance; spatial audio and intermedia installation; and sound for contemporary dance, experimental film and transdisciplinary performance. She performs internationally as a solo artist, and has also collaborated with artists such as Magda Mayas, Ute Wassermann, The Necks, Nels Cline, George E. Lewis, Miya Masaoka, dance theatre artist Vera Mantero, and filmmaker Abigail Child. She is a member of Splitter Orchester in Berlin. Parkins’ work has been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Nordic Biennale of Contemporary Art (Norway), Experimental Intermedia (NYC), Kunsthalle Basel, Kunsthall Bergen, Music Unlimited (AU), FIMAV (QC), Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (Strasbourg), NEXT (Bratislava), and many more.

Parkins’ recordings are published by Superpang, Important Records, Confront Recordings, Atavistic, Henceforth Records, Infrequent Seams, and Creative Sources. Her writing has been published by Research Catalogue and Errant Sound. She has been an invited resident artist at Rauschenberg Residency (US), Elektronmusikstudion-EMS Stockholm, Q-02 Workspace for Experimental Music and Sound Art (Brussels), Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center (US), and by Frei und Hanseastadt Hamburg Kulturbehoerde. Her work has received support from New York State Council on the Arts, the Berlin Cultural Senate, and Musik Fonds (Germany), among others.

Andrea Parkins interview:: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2022/05/06/andrea-parkins-interviewed/

Eliad Wagner (b. 1979) is a composer, performer, sound artist, and lecturer. He holds a BA in Physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an MMus in Composition and Music Technology from the Utrecht School of the Arts. His work explores the intersection of composition and performance, with a focus on the vocabulary of electronic music, autonomous processes, cosmotechnics and the role of attention and intention in audio culture.

Wagner performs live electronic music, primarily on modular synthesizers, and composes for small ensembles and installation contexts. He is a co-founder and contributing composer of the electroacoustic ensemble Circuit Training. His performance practice spans a broad range of genres- from jazz and noise to acousmatic music and sound art. He has collaborated with numerous artists, including Korhan Erel, Werner Dafeldecker, Ignaz Schick, Marta Zapparoli, Wolfgang Seidel, Olaf Rupp, Els Vandeweyer, Emilio Gordoa, Andre Vida, Richard Scott, Alexandre Babel, Tomomi Adachi, Dean Roberts, Dafna Naphtali and Robyn Schulkowsky. Since 2015, he has served as Head of the BA programme in Electronic Music Production and Performance at Catalyst Institute for Creative Arts and Technology in Berlin—a genre-agnostic, international program he designed to train the next generation of electronic music composers and performers.

His work has been featured by institutions such as the Computer Music Journal (MIT Press), Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Guggenheim Museum New York, Q-O2 (BE), STEIM (NL), Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, WORM Rotterdam, Ensemble Phoenix Basel (CH), TU Berlin, UDK Berlin, and the Aarhus Academy of Music (DK), among others.

Zouning Anne Liao is a composer and sound designer whose music reflects her fascination with nature, malfunctioning machines, distorted noises, and the interplay between refined and raw timbres. Driven by a curiosity about the expressive potential of electronic circuits, she is passionate about DIY electronics, building her own sensor instruments to explore new sonic possibilities shaped by physical gestures.

Official Website

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Tags: Andrea Parkins, Chicago, Elastic Arts, Elastro, Elastro: Andrea Parkins/ Eliad Wagner, Eliad Wagner, Logan Square, Zouning Anne Liao