In his first Chicago performance since 2011, Chris Madak will present new algorithmic and systems-based pieces for synthesizer, computer, and solo improviser.

Chris Madak (b. 1983, Massilon, Ohio) is a musician and electroacoustic composer active in Cleveland and Philadelphia and best known for his work as Bee Mask. Based in private systems and oblique strategies, Madak’s work endeavors to preserve and extend the countercultural heritage of experimental music. Madak draws on a varied technical vocabulary within experimental music, including handmade electronics and percussion, analog synthesis, concrète manipulations on tape and samplers, prepared guitar and piano, and digital signal processing. Rooted in rituals of listening and the convivial experience of phonographic sound in space from hi-fi’s to sound systems, Madak is motivated by an idea of music as studio art—distinct from what he believes are the arid textual formulas of sound art. He approaches performance as an opening of the experimental space of the studio onto the world. Madak has released several LPs on the Spectrum Spools imprint of Editions Mego and has published editions of his and others' work through his own Deception Island (2005-2011) and Pear Growers Series (2013-present) labels. He has performed throughout North America, Australia, Europe, and Japan, and collaborated with artists including Donato Dozzy, Surgeon, Charles Cohen, Outer Space, Autre Ne Veut, Laraaji, and Oneohtrix Point Never.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo. Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music, sound art, and intermedia projects. Visit lampo.org.

Judy Ledgerwood, preparatory studies for 'Chromatic Patterns for the Graham Foundation,' 2013

Please join us for a reception to celebrate the opening of Judy Ledgerwood: Chromatic Patterns for the Graham Foundation.

For more information on the exhibition, Chromatic Patterns for the Graham Foundation, click here.

View of the Graham Foundation bookshop designed by Ania Jaworska, Chicago, 2013. Photo Travis Roozée.

The Graham Foundation is thrilled to announce the launch of its new architectural bookshop designed by Chicago-based Ania Jaworska. To celebrate, please join us for a reception and book sale. All books will be discounted up to 20% off or more!

Located in the former dining room of the foundation’s historic Madlener House, a 1901 Prairie style mansion in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood, Jaworska’s installation is comprised of four bold mesh structures that display books and periodicals from the fields of architecture, design, art, and culture. In addition to recent hard to find publications, many titles are by the Graham Foundation’s international community of grantees and others are related to the Foundation’s exhibition program.

Ania Jaworska is an architect and educator. She currently teaches art, design, and architecture courses at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. She holds a master's degree in architecture from the Cracow University of Technology in Poland as well as the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Her practice focuses on exploring the connection between art and architecture and her work explores bold simple forms, humor and commentary on conceptual, historic, and cultural references. Jaworska’s work was recently presented as part of 13178 Moran Street: Grounds for Detroit in Common Ground, the 13th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice (2012).

The installation was fabricated by Metal Magic.

Cleveland-based artist Steve Hauschildt premieres music made in part by gesture—translating movement into sound. In his first multimedia performance using Buchla Lightning as his instrument, Hauschildt will conduct “music in a three-dimensional field.” Designed by synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla, this specialized controller operates on the principles of optical triangulation. Tiny infrared transmitters, built into two handheld wands, transform data, including velocity, acceleration, and pitch, into MIDI signals that are sent directly to synthesizers and electronics, allowing Hauschildt to control the system through gesture as opposed to a traditional keyboard.

Steve Hauschildt (b. 1984, Cleveland, Ohio) is an electronic musician and founding member of the band Emeralds (2006-2013). He has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Japan and has collaborated with Daniel Lopatin of Oneohtrix Point Never, Hollywood sound designer/composer Alan Howarth and Aaron Dilloway of Wolf Eyes, among others. His discography includes Tragedy & Geometry (Kranky, 2011), Sequitur (2012) and most recently, S/H, (Editions Mego, 2013), a two-disc anthology of previously unreleased and rare works from the artist’s archives.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo. Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music, sound art, and intermedia projects. Visit www.lampo.org.

New Architecture Typologies (Proof 001). © WEATHERS / Sean Lally LLC.

Architect Sean Lally will discuss his Graham-funded book The Air from Other Planets: A Brief History of Architecture to Come (Lars Müller Publishers, 2013)—a speculation into an architecture produced by designing the energy within our environment (electromagnetic, thermodynamic, acoustic, and chemical). This architecture exchanges the walls and shells we have assumed to be the only type of attainable architecture for a range of material energies that develop shapes, aesthetics, organizational systems, and social experiences. In this world, energy emerges as more than the substance that simply fills the interior of a building or reflects off its outer walls. Instead, energy becomes its own enterprise for design innovation: it becomes the architecture itself.

Please join us for a reception and book signing in the Graham Foundation bookshop following the talk.

Sean Lally is the founder of Chicago-based design office WEATHERS/ Sean Lally LLC. Recent projects include proposals for the Gdansk Museum of WWII; an extension to the Stockholm City Library; and a proposal for the urban redevelopment of Reykjavik, Iceland. Lally was co-editor and contributor to Softspace (Routledge, 2007) and guest-editor of Energies: New Material Boundaries (Wiley Press, 2009). In 2011–12, he received the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and in 2012, he received the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers. He is currently assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Architecture.

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