Uncanny Valley: Pianist Oni Buchanan and poet Jon Woodward perform works by Jon Gibson and Cindy Cox
CNMAT presents:
Uncanny Valley: Pianist Oni Buchanan and poet Jon Woodward perform works by Jon Gibson and Cindy Cox
Featuring composer Jon Gibson’s newly commissioned Uncanny Valley for pianist, speaker (poet Jon Woodward) and digital samples, and UCB Professor Cindy Cox’s Hierosgamos: Studies in Harmony and Resonance, a large-°©‐scale set of seven piano etudes.
In 1970, roboticist Masahiro Mori coined the term “uncanny valley” to describe the emotional and empathic chasm between humans and imperfect human simulacra, a gap created by their imperfection. This program searches out what is most uncanny, and most human, in both language and music.
In this program, the piano performance of Oni Buchanan joins and reflects the spoken text of the poem “Uncanny Valley” as performed by its author, poet Jon Woodward. Digital samples triggered by the reader enmesh the piano and spoken text, haunting the music with echoes of itself. Extending outward from the phenomenon of “semantic satiation” (whereby a single word loses all apparent meaning and identity when repeated for even a short duration), this program investigates whether or not the same satiation is possible with phrases, sentences, pairs of verse lines, or musical forms.
Also on the program will be Cindy Cox’s Hierosgamos: Studies in Harmony and Resonance. Rarely performed in its entirety, this demanding set of etudes requires the highest level of interpretive skill and technique from the pianist. Oni Buchanan has toured with these etudes for several years and will return to the Bay area to record the entire set in May 2013.
