2011: Terry Berlier & Bart Hopkin | David Michalak (performing for Terry)

Percussion Ball/Pan Lid Gamelan II | Branching Corrugahorn & Other Inventions

Bart Hopkin has been hailed as “the granddaddy of the modern experimental acoustic instrument movement.” He earned that title as editor of the “Experimental Musical Instruments Quarterly,” a journal he worked on for 14 years, beginning in the mid-1980s. “During this time he compiled descriptions of some of the most amazing and beautiful acoustic and electro-acoustic instruments being invented,” said Erik Nugent of Invent Music, an experimental musical instrument workshop at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Hopkin received a B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1974, and later received a B.A. in music education from San Francisco State University. A professional guitarist, he has taught, written, composed, performed and recorded in many places, including Kingston, Jamaica, where for several years he researched and wrote on Jamaican children's songs and revival church music. His numerous inventions includes what he calls his Savart's Wheel, a tuned, motor-driven scraper with a range of more than two chromatic octaves that has been jokingly listed as “one of the most irritating musical instruments ever devised,&rdqou; and wind instruments capable of playing all notes, including those between the tone holes on a traditional clarinet.

Terry Berlier is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with sculpture, installation, and video. Her work is often kinetic, interactive and/or sound based and often focuses around everyday objects, the environment, ideas of nonplace/place and queer practice. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows both nationally and internationally (Europe, Australia, Middle East) including Barcelona, Venice, Girona, Meinz, Tel Aviv, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento. She recently received the Kala Art Institute fellowship and residency for 2009-10 in Berkeley, CA. In 2008-9 she received the Visions from the New California Residency at the Exploratorium: Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception in San Francisco through the Alliance of Artists Communities. She has received grants from California Council for Humanities California Stories Fund, City of Cincinnati Individual Artist Grant, and the City of Davis Art Contract. She was a fellowship recipient for a residency at the Millay Colony for Artists in New York in 2004. In 2003 she received an MFA in Studio Art from University of California, Davis and a BFA from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 1994. Berlier has taught at UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, and California College of the Arts. She currently teaches in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.

The Percussion Ball began in an effort to make a more performative sculpture for a percussionist to play. I initially conceived it as an unpredictable and chaotic object that would roll around as it was being played. I wanted musicians to be more physical in their interaction with the object. The tubes coiled inside resonated when the outside face is slapped. Each sound hole, or hexagon face, outlets at its’ opposite side, allowing for variations in pitch.

Artist (photo by Photographer)