Jeff Talman (born 1954 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania) is a contemporary artist who works in a variety of media including sound, light, video installation, sculpture, graphics and photography.Talman graduated with BA and MA degrees in Music Composition from the City College of New York. He later studied at Columbia University, where he began using computers for sound composition in 1984. He also taught and conducted orchestras at both schools. He has lived in New York City since 1976.
Though trained as a composer of chamber and orchestral music, Talman switched modes of presentation after an extended stay in Europe. His repeated visits to the Cathedral of St. Vitus in Prague in 1996-97 provided important insight regarding architectural sound. Talman determined that the ambient sound of a space, the Room Tone, is sufficient to activate the resonance of the space, which provides unique sonic perceptual data of the site.
After two years of experimentation with recordings of spatial sound, Talman’s installation “Vanishing Point 1.1” (1999) was presented at St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University. This work featured the site’s resonance, extracted from a recording of its ambient room tone, amplified, treated as a compositional element and returned to the space in multi-channel sound. Since then Talman has produced numerous works that feature this unique resonance-composition and feedback technique. The installations, at times, also incorporate resonant sculpture, video projection and other visual objects.
Installation sites have included Cathedral Square (Domplatte) in Cologne, Germany, St. James Cathedral in Chicago, the Bavarian Forest, a wind turbine site in Åland, Finland, the MIT Media Lab, The Kitchen, Eyebeam, bitforms gallery in New York City and others.
July 4: Notes on Nature of the Night Sky
www.jefftalman.com
Adler Planetarium, 1300 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, 6 PM
One show only – limited seating!
Hear the sound of stars from the original NOTNS project as score to a stunning 3-D tour of the cosmos. The presentation includes descriptions of processes used by collaborator Dr. Daniel Huber, a NASA astrophysicist, to model the sound, plus details of the original Bavarian Forest installation. Project sound is presented on the planetarium’s state-of-the-art sound system.
Nature of the Night Sky premiered as a presentation of the Berghof Gibacht near Waldmünchen, Germany in May, 2011. It was featured in an NPR interview on Weekend Edition with Jacki Lyden and was later released as a CD by New Domain Records. The installation is slated for a North American premiere later this year – more information coming soon.
