Lovely Isomers (click icon to download)
RPI Department of Arts presents Anna Lindemann and N F Chase's Lovely Isomers in a concert of eclectic sounds and visuals. The performance will feature Lindemann's work Bird Brain for ensemble, electronics and stop-motion animated video, and Chase's Ngoma Lungundu for multi-channel electronics and environmental video projection. The performance will take place in EMPAC's Theater, Saturday April 17th at 8pm.

Anna Lindemann is a music composer who's work explores nature in its poignancy, absurdity, and complexity. Los Angeles expat N F Chase's music has been described as "The Rite of Spring meets Metallica" (L.A. Times) and probes the intersection between pop and the avant-garde.

Anna Lindemann has composed music for ballet, film, theater, and concert halls, and has received awards for her musical compositions from ASCAP, MTNA, Collage New Music, the Yale Sudler Fund for the Creative and Performing Arts, and the Yale Music Department. Lindemann graduated from Yale College with a degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology where she conducted field research on bird calls and bird speciation in Indonesia, and studied genes involved in the patterning of butterfly wings during development. Lindemann’s work integrates her passion for multidisciplinary art and biology. Information about Anna Lindemann may be found at www.askewmusic.com.

Dubbed by L.A. Weekly as an "Eye/Ear Explorer", N F Chase's music has been performed internationally by the likes of the California EAR Unit, Southwest Chamber Music, New Zealand's 175 East, Long Beach Opera and the Philadelphia Classical Symphony. His electro-acoustic composition has been featured at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Holland, and as part of the Weimar/New York festival in Weimar, Germany. Chase is founder of the Musical Art/Sound Laboratory (Chase Ateliers) whose trans-disciplinary work has been exhibited in festivals across the US and Europe. Chase's work with improvising trio NIRUSU III has been acclaimed by the L.A. Weekly as "pushing the edge of audio/visual improv," while his interactive audio/visual composition Transmission was featured with the Illuminated Corridor's NOVA at the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Information about Nicholas Chase may be found at www.nicholaschase.net.

Lovely Isomers brings Lindemann and Chase together on the EMPAC Theater stage where the two will present their diverse and unusual audio/visual compositions.

Lindemann's multimedia Bird Brain combines stop motion animation and video with music for soprano, cello, clarinet, and electronics that unites simple melodies and funky avant-garde rhythms. The piece unfolds as a male bird builds a bower of butterflies to attract a mate, while a female bird tends to her nest atop a kitchen stove. We see glimpses into the biology of these creatures as butterfly wings develop and pasta mitosis animates the growth of the incubating egg. But what will become of the birds when humans parasitize their world to make outlandish hats? 

Chase's Ngoma Lungundu integrates 4-channel, spatialized sound and interactive video into an experiential, musical environment. The ngoma lungundu (translated: "voice that thunders") is a sacred drum of the Lemba tribe in Africa, said to have offered divine protection in battle. Sequences of live action film, hand-drawn animation, and vector graphics combine with the electronic music of Ngoma Lungundu and form a choreographed dance of light, shadow and sound.

Founded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, EMPAC has been hailed by the New York Times as a “technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses … dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before.” EMPAC offers artists, scholars, researchers, engineers, designers, and audiences opportunities for creative exploration that are available nowhere else under a single roof. Lovely Isomers at EMPAC is sponsored by the RPI Arts Department.

Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders)
N F Chase 2008
The Ngoma Lungundu is a mythical/mystical drum carried and guarded by the Lemba people of Africa. Recent controversial research by anthropologist Dr. Tudor Parfitt (University of London School of Oriental and African Studies), draws connection between the Ngoma Lungundu and the Arc of the Covenant, inspired by the recent discovery that the Lemba are, in fact, physical descendants of the lost tribe of Israelites known as the Cohen. The Cohen were the guardians of the Arc and, based on this and the specific mythical similarities of the Ngoma Lungundu and the Biblical Arc of the Covenant, Dr. Parfitt asserts that the Ngoma Lungundu and the Arc may be one and the same. Dr. Parfitt has found the most recent incarnation of the Ngoma Lungundu, dated at about 650 years of age, at the Harare Museum of Human Science in Zimbabwe. Be it Arc of the Covenant or not, the Ngoma Lungundu seems to refer to a particular style of drum that has been created and recreated repeatedly by the Lemba tribesman as an icon of religious faith and military might in very much the same way that the Arc of the Covenant is referred to in ancient texts and Old Testament of the Bible. The Lemba, incidentally (and enigmatically), practice Judaism.

Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders) is inspired by the idea of a drum that speaks with with the absolute voice of Nature, a call-to-being, as it were. In developing Ngoma, I thought to incorporate the organic movement of the body as its visual narrative. Sequences of live action film, hand-drawn animation and vector graphics are being combined, layered, shaped, and manipulated in real-time response to the sound/music of Ngoma and form the choreographic element of what is, essentially, a dance piece with no dancers.