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Spider+Cricket

Front end image – Spider + Cricket installation as of July 16, 2019. Bradley & Ruchalski were recently awarded the Wave Farm artist-residency to realize SpiderCricket (Sp+Cr). Residency takes place July 12-21, 2019. We will broadcast several times on Wave Farm’s radio station WGXC 90.7 FM, Radio for Open Ears. Stephen Bradley and Edward Ruchalski’s SpiderCricket (Sp+Cr) is a multi-phonic ecological radio installation informed by Wave Farm’s biophonic and radiophonic soundscape. The core of Sp+Cruses a “spider web” wind-harp structure, which also functions as an antenna for low-power FM transmitters that broadcast on the property. Using DIY micro-mixers, numerous solar-powered FM radio receivers are tuned to one of the broadcast channels. Each wire’s unique length is tuned to a particular frequency that mixes with other sonic algorithms. Field recordings made during the dawn and dusk cycles are incorporated into Sp+Cr sculpture and into the final, live WGXC radio broadcast. Here is an […]

Cornet Experiments

Recently, I purchased a cornet, Mercedes II designed after Bach. It is a huge step up from the Allora black ART-1301, Bb plastic trumpet that I have played now for over a year and a half—I broke the ring slide after 9 months from playing hard, averaging 1.5 hours a day, sometimes more. For the past five months, I have been researching what kind of the trumpet and cornet would make the best sense. Finally, the cornet won out. Instead of using the plastic mouthpiece, I used a brass “?” that has helped train my embouchure. The plastic trumpet was perfect at this stage since I was unsure if the instrument would hold my attention for very long. Needless to say, it has become an obsession, which has driven my decision to invest in a midrange instrument. My other main instrument is tenor sax. The weight and feel of the Mercedes II is […]

SPEED-Future

SPEED Future is an ongoing project having to do with our (my) relationship to the speed at which we are traveling, from work to home, vacation, shopping, entertainment or just the joy of travel. Regardless, the automobile has changed our relationship to place due to the displacement of our bodies from the land which we inhabit. Photographing from the window of the automobile at high speeds is a direct analysis of using photography as a way of understanding the place I transverse post travel. This project was inspired by my early experience while living in South Korea, for two years from 1968-69. In the ninth grade, I had to travel back and forth from each week from Daegu to Busan and back because there was no higher level of school available on the military base that we lived. Every Sunday evening around 7PM my classmates and I would jump onto […]

SHINE

“There is in natural things a certain truth which cannot be seen with the outward eye/ear, but perceived by the mind alone… In this [truth] lies the whole art of freeing the spirit from its fetters…” Carol Jung Video artwork: Stephen Bradley, Performance, Lisa Cella, Publisher: Chen Li Music, Album: SHINE @2017 Lisa Cella performs the flute works of six contemporary composers and provides a sonic framework for Stephen Bradley’s time-lapse video work that explores a meditative perspective of quotidian events. By slicing time into precise visual moments, the video presents the listener/viewer with an illuminated focus on the familiar. Interweaving Bradley’s visual “curiosity of motion” with Cella’s musical interpretations, this collaboration engages our capacity for deep listening and seeing. It opens the “doors of perception” and reveals a pattern language comprised of fractals and synesthesia, leading us to apprehend the ineffable. https://vimeo.com/showcase/3854572 The music on this DVD represents a joyful […]

Tuning Fork

Central themes coalesce around the acoustic and spiritual act of tuning, of finding elements of alignment or harmonics within randomness, crystallized in the experience of the recent total solar eclipse. The sonic-scape of Tuning Fork explores a process of frequency scanning amid the vast interstices of vibrations alternately discovering then losing, finding again – signal. This sonic brew provides the medium from which the story is tuned. Shifting tones of the narrative arc delineate a journey to the central trajectory of the total solar eclipse that raced coast-to-coast across America in August of 2017. Above image is an installation by Bradley in his backyard used to document the partial solar eclipse 2017. About the collaboration. Bradley/Sturgeon WorksStephen Bradley and John Sturgeon have collaborated in creating sound art works, as well as streaming events and performances, nationally and internationally for over 16 years. Mutual interest in spatial aspects of surround-sound, the […]

roamin

In the Neighborhood Bradley/Sturgeon Works ©2017, 3:47 A subtly urgent tom-tom beat underscores an evolving narrative beginning with a plaintive sense of coming late to change, or fear of some essential part of Self is – lost at sea, through a growing awareness that forms the impetus for seeking the unknowns that lie ahead. The conciseness of vocals and spiraling acoustics combine implying clear resolve for self-knowledge that surges forth with exuberant buzz. Ghost Bradley/Sturgeon Works ©2017, 4:25 A delicate, subtly soulful sax provides agency for a voyage that undulates between cosmic perspective and the ephemeral nature of our personal fate. The wandering cinematic tones of densely layered sound and observational text seek solace in a call to join together in lonely places and seek hope in the sober embrace of our place in the continuum. Tucumcari Bradley/Sturgeon Works ©2017, 2:53 Traversing the blacktop-laced American West evokes touchstones of empathy […]

Radio Compost

RC is a radio /podcast project that focuses on acoustic ecology, seeking sounds of changes in the environment from difficult to reach places to our own backyards in suburbia, city centers, public spaces and local “natural” environments. The curation is based on different approaches that scientists, artists and musicians might take, often though collaboration and experimenting with different diciplinary methods. 030519_RC for Colaboradio, Berlin, GermanEnvironmental Listening “When we use the term environmental sound, we are not referring to a specific kind of sound, nor a specific kind of environment, but to a specific conception of sound in which it is defined by its environmental context: thus, the tweeting of birds and the rustling of leaves in the wind are part of the environmental sound of a forest; the hum of air conditioning and the tapping of computer keyboards are part of the environmental sound of an office.” Bianchi, Frederick & […]

Acoustic Performance Ecology

The above image is the BROOD X Cicada, 2004, Summer. The following are sound works based on hard to hear, out of human range, low or high frequencies found in locations that are often also overwhelmed by industrial and technological noise. The first track, Compost Song, is a recording of our compost pile from a few summers ago using a hydrophone. In postproduction (processing and sweating the audio track), I was able to expose more subtle and quiet sounds that would be inaudible from above the ground, outside in the noisy airspace. The sound of bio decomposition is very similar to the sounds of human digestion. The second track is a more recent approach that involves performing in the environment in real time with natural and unnatural sounds. By performing sound back into the environment I am strive to abate the noise, redirect our hearing, perhaps canceling out unwanted frequencies. […]

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Microplastic biofilm portraits

The following images document the process of sampling microplastics collected from the shoreline of Masonville Cove Environmental Education Center (MCEEC) and culturing the trash for biofilm. This project was inspired by Water’s Edge, Biome Tells, an interdisciplinary art & science project examines the complexity of microbial communities living on trash in the Chesapeake Bay. Garbage was collected from the shoreline of the MCEEC and micro-organisms from the debris were cultured in my studio laboratory. Initially, biofilm was imaged at the Keith Porter Imaging Facility (KPIF) with fluorescent microscopy, which revealed a diversity of micro-organisms flourishing on human-made products. Micrographs were incorporated into a three-dimensional art piece that displays the debris covered with thriving microbes, ultimately showing the resilience of life in emergent environments created by humans. This project came out of a collaboration with Dr. Tagide deCarvalho, director of the KPIF, UMBC. Confocal images and process can be viewed here.

Invasive Material

Water’s Edge, Biome Tells – Invasive Material (WEBT) focuses on the cultivation and identification of microorganisms found growing on debris collected within the littoral zone of the Patapsco River’s brackish Middle Branch at Masonville Cove in the Brooklyn community of Baltimore. For this interdisciplinary sci-art project, collaborators Stephen Bradley, media artist, and imaging scientist, Dr. Tagide deCarvalho, director, Keith Porter Imaging Facility, UMBC, use various tools of ecological research that inform sculptural and visualization references and renditions. Invasive Material informs the complex relationships between discarded material culture and the ecological system in the Inner Harbor. Compounding elements from the scientific “lab” and the artist studio, Bradley and deCarvalho strive to find a middle space of inquiry shared by the parallel processes of art and science. The purpose of the project identifies and documents the living organisms that continue to survive and evolve within the compromised waters of Masonville Cove. Representations […]