the artist is distracted. investigates our society’s relationship with the digital world. It asks the audience to confront our collective unwillingness to engage actively with the world around us. The work places a now-ubiquitous phenomenon center stage: the man lost in his iPhone. It encourages the audience to engage directly with the artist in real time, providing them access to his phone number and social media handles. the artist is distracted. does not pass judgment on our collective distraction. Rather, it places it on display as an artifact and asks the audience to lean in and look more closely.

Matt studied musical theatre and psychology at NYU, the Meisner Technique at the Esper Studio, on-camera acting at The Barrow Group, and improv at The Groundlings. In LA, Matt was seen in the performance art series Sparrowland (The Electric Lodge), a staged reading of Gabe Kaplan’s developing series, Otis and Erwin (The Secret Rose), and the pilot of Looks by Bratt, a web series he co-wrote. At NYU, Matt wrote and produced a poetry piece, The Best Little Boy in The World at the Provincetown Playhouse. Matt is currently forming his own theater company, The People’s Theater of New York.

Photo credit:

Matt Ross

The music and visual elements are synchronized to be played when their assigned region is activated. The visuals are a composite of generative particle systems and video layer blending techniques with fast fourier transforms. Its aesthetic is composed of blending work to portray an essence of dream where the current subjects are blended to seamlessly integrate with the proceeding subjects in celestial landscapes. The music moves in a narrative from contemporary piano to an ambient percussive space and into a counterpoint of synth energies that accentuate the surreal essence of a dream during August Nights.

Brandon Kader recently received his Master’s from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU TISCH School of the Arts. There he pursued ways of integrating his music and visual art in emerging media and technology. From visual programming language to projection and image processing, he has created systems to design ways for composers to perform with more showmanship as a conductor of a piece on stage. He has collaborated with TISCH DANCE MFA Henrikke Boger and Sarah Amores for the Algorithmic Composition Show at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn and Beautiful Question at 2nd Avenue TISCH DANCE SHIFT Show. He has performed at the NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) Show and at the LIPP (Live Image Processing and Performance) Show.

Photo credit:

MitchKader