Maryanne Amacher: Living Sound

About

Throughout her life, Maryanne Amacher exercised an exemplary sensitivity and care for the ways in which her work was presented. This care is both that which exceptionally distinguishes her practice, and that which has kept it from circulating through many conventional distribution channels. Now, 10 years after Amacher’s passing, her materials have found a permanent home where traces of the complex, elusive “whole” of her oeuvre will, over the next few years, finally become accessible to researchers and to the public. Join us in celebrating this momentous occasion at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on March 12th. For this special occasion, Bill Dietz & Amy Cimini will present a selection of original archival documents (writings, scores), objects (artworks, audio gear), and sounds (newly digitized audio) — just a small sampling of the collection’s soon to be accessible breadth.  

Maryanne Amacher (1938 – 2009) was a composer of large-scale fixed-duration sound installations and a highly original thinker in the areas of perception, sound spatialization, creative intelligence, and aural architecture. She is frequently cited as a pioneer of what has come to be called “sound art,” although her thought and creative practice consistently challenges key assumptions about the capacities and limitations of this nascent genre. Often considered to be a part of a post-Cagean lineage, her work anticipates some of the most important developments in network culture, media arts, acoustic ecology, and sound studies.