Matthew Gantt

Isomorphs and Plastics filters smartphone noise, trap sample packs and modular squelch through twenty-first century indeterminacy and digital pseudo-sensuality.

Inspired in equal parts by John Cage’s chance operations, random MIDI structures, San Fransisco Tape Music Center experiments and Lex Luger’s revolutionary production circa 2010, this suite of live electronic music reckons with the impossible density of contemporary media by arbitrarily dividing it into two compositions.

Taking cadences from its source material as a starting point, found sounds are orchestrated with a variety of media signifiers (arena-rock guitar, auto-tune sludge, sci-fi synths), and re-presented in both raw and mediated states.

Performance of this work will be accompanied by projections from Plastics.app, a virtual environment created in Unity exploring these concepts in visual parallel.

Matthew D. Gantt is a composer and conceptualist based in Brooklyn, NY. His creative practice focuses on procedural systems and the idiosyncrasies of the technology that facilitate them, as well as the overlap between production and consumption of digitized culture. Recent projects include releases with Orange Milk and Oxtail Recordings, an eight by eleven foot graphic score for interdisciplinary performance, and a series of VR environments containing procedural motion and spatial sound. While living in New York, Gantt has performed or presented work at a range of spaces, including Issue Project Room, New Museum, the Stone, NYU, Time Media, Inc. and internationally at the IRCAM Academy in Paris, France. He received an M.M. in composition from CUNY Brooklyn College, teaches music technology at Sarah Lawrence, Kaufman Center and Harvestworks, and worked as a studio assistant to electronics pioneer Morton Subotnick from ’15 – ’18.