This concert was held in Auer Hall on October 25, 2025. We would like to thank Katy Carnaggio for helping us with the Auer Hall video system and acoustic treatments. Ben Wesenberg helped us understand the Auer Hall mixing console and arranged for audio crew support.
Refractions: Paths of Knowing explores the idea that perception is never a direct mirror of reality. Just as light bends when it passes through glass, our understanding of the world is refracted — shaped and shifted — by the cognitive, cultural, and emotional lenses we choose, inherit, or construct when we try to make sense of what surrounds us.
Each refraction — each viewpoint, model, or moment of insight — is neither wholly right nor entirely wrong. It is simply a path, a partial but meaningful way of knowing. No single lens captures the whole; it is through their convergence, contrast, and layering that a fuller image begins to emerge.
This piece is not a search for certainty, but an invitation to dwell in complexity: to listen across differences, to embrace ambiguity, and to consider the weight each lens carries in shaping what we believe to be real — and in revealing who we are through the beliefs we hold.
The composition draws inspiration from the camera lens and strings as a metaphor for perception and real-time control, where multiple inputs and perspectives are processed to interpret sound and image. These metaphors mirror the human condition: fragmented yet striving for coherence, refracted yet reaching toward understanding.
Photos by Feng Yu
Potentiometric Displacement Sensor Prototype by Jifeng Deng
My first musical instrument was the drum set, so I’ve always been fascinated by drumming. We usually think of the drummer in a band as playing a supporting role, laying down a steady beat while other instruments or voices handle melodic lines or chords that may be more memorable. But it’s the specific characters of these drumbeats that intrigue me. Their styles are infinitely variable, and a drummer’s way of pushing and pulling the pulses by tiny amounts can make the difference between a bland beat and an exciting groove. Slipstream features a lot of grooves — those are the streams. But now and then they slip, skidding into a new tempo before snapping back.
A slipstream is a lower-pressure area that a fast object (car, boat, plane) leaves in its wake. A second, trailing object moving into this wake can be pulled in the same direction and speed as the leading object. That’s how some of the electronic sound in Slipstream behaves. It gets pulled into the wake of the drum groove for a bit before drifting away. But other parts of the electronic accompaniment are more aggressive, propelling the drummer onward. The electronics support the drums through a range of rock and dance music styles.
Thanks to Drew Neal for helping me make my drum part more playable, advising on notation, and improvising some phrases in the piece.
A Pagoda as a piece of architecture reflects history, aesthetics, religion, philosophy among many other cultural elements. Pagoda as a concept reminds me of each unique yet contemplative journey visiting different temples. The rituals of recitation and chanting practice in the temples offer the observers interfaces connecting themselves and the surroundings in different ways. In this piece, the impressions of the three pagodas are depicted in different audiovisual approaches through the real-time interactive performance.
This video provides an intensely personal and at times humorous consideration of frightening topics — aging, illness, death — and affirms life’s precious impermanence. A light-hearted opening introduces my aging canine companion, Molly. An extended center section, based on family documents and photographs, reaches back through several decades to my family’s farm life in rural Michigan in the 1920s. The work continues with events from my 1960’s suburban childhood. Near the end, Molly and my father, both still enjoying what will prove to be their last few years, play together.
A pivotal theme of the piece is the use of recorded images, both visual and aural, as a means of embracing the present, even as it inexorably becomes the past.
Molly was completed more than 25 years ago. That was an exciting time to start work with digital images: Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere were just a few years old, and flatbed image scanners capable of digitizing a printed document or color photo had only recently become affordable. Consumer-grade digital video cameras weren’t in common use yet: video clips of Molly were shot with an analog video camera and then digitized, before editing and processing with Premiere.
Because I am especially interested in the interaction of sound and moving visual images, it was very important to me to work on both aspects of the piece at once. Despite the presence of images, the radiophonic treatment of the human voice is similar to that found in dramatic works for sound alone. Molly received a Finalist Prize in the video category of the Bourges 26th International Electroacoustic Music Competition and was released on a DVD included in Volume 27 of Computer Music Journal, December 2003.
Air Ballet is about the flying insects, including bees, in our suburban garden. I recorded video of insects at high frame rates so that I could slow them down smoothly, letting us appreciate the graceful and sometimes puzzling movement of bees, moths, and butterflies. I go between moments like these and ones where the insects appear more excited, flitting about at their normal, busy speed. The audio contains some of the natural sound of this environment, from close-up bee buzzing to distant neighborhood noises, as well as more abstract, pitched sonic textures that support the emotional import of the images.
Most of the plants in the garden are native to the eastern United States, so they attract the native pollinators that are under threat from pesticides and climate change. I want to foster an appreciation for the symbiotic relationship between these living beings, which have evolved to depend on each other. I hope this will encourage people to contemplate their own local environment and do what they can to support the flora and fauna inhabiting it.
Capsule is a ballet-based video with 3D graphics and original computer music. The video, prepared using green-screen (chroma-key) techniques and motion graphics applications, places a ballerina in unexpected contexts and environments, including a floating chrome capsule that reappears throughout, an antique syringe, popsicle fireworks, a movement-mirroring pin sculpture, steel eyeballs, and more. In parallel, the music incorporates the environment’s Foley sound effect cues into the compositional texture, taking the form of a series of timbral and textural variations on several musical ideas presented early on.
While I had worked with dance for a long time as a composer, including video, adding the element of 3D space and structure was, for me, like the proverbial old dog learning new tricks. Serving as both composer and videographer created a stronger creative link between sound and sight. With Capsule as my third 3D work, I was excited to continue with dance in imaginary environments, particularly as the dance world was becoming increasingly interested in dance on screen as an art form of its own.
I was thrilled to work with my Indiana University faculty colleague and choreographer, Michael Vernon, and with former Jacobs School dance major Ryan McCreary Kwasniewski. Also, special thanks to Christian Claessens for providing additional choreography.
Capsule was commissioned by the Trustees of Indiana University and the Jacobs School of Music in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the IU Department of Music (2011) and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the IU School of Music (2012).
Drew Neal is a percussionist, educator, and arts administrator based in New York. They currently serves as Producer and Tour Manager with Sō Percussion, coordinating logistics, stage management, and production for performances and events. Drew has performed with ensembles including the Metropolis Ensemble, Illinois Symphony Orchestra, and Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared as a guest artist at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, MOXsonic Experimental Arts Festival, and the Percussive Arts Society International Convention.
As an educator, Drew has over eight years of teaching experience, from university-level instruction at Indiana University, where they served as an Associate Instructor, to K–12 programs and private studios across several states. Their work has been recognized with the Hutton Honors College Creative Activity Grant, a Global Music Award, and the Indiana University Performer’s Certificate. Drew holds a PD and MM in Percussion Performance from Indiana University and a BA in Music from Troy University.
John Gibson composes electronic music, which he often combines with instrumental soloists or ensembles. He also creates fixed-media audio and audiovisual works that focus on environmental soundscape. His portrait CD, Traces, is available on the Innova label, along with other recordings on the Centaur, Everglade, Innova, and SEAMUS labels. Audiences across the world have heard his music, in venues including the D-22 punk rock club in Beijing, the Palazzo Pisani in Venice, and the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C. Presentations of his electroacoustic music include concerts at the Seoul International Computer Music Festival, the Bourges Synthèse Festival in France, the Brazilian Symposium on Computer Music, the Australasian Computer Music Conference, and many ICMC and SEAMUS conferences. Significant awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Paul Jacobs Memorial Fund Commission from the Tanglewood Music Center, and a residency in the south of France from the Camargo Foundation. He was a Mentoring Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in May 2017. Gibson is associate professor of music and director of the Center for Electronic and Computer Music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
Jeffrey Hass is Professor Emeritus of Composition at Indiana University Bloomington and former Director of the Center for Electronic and Computer Music (CECM). He previously taught theory and composition at Rutgers University and the Interlochen Center for the Arts. His music has been premiered by the Louisville Orchestra, Memphis Symphony, and Concordia Chamber Orchestra, and heard at Lincoln Center as well as national conferences of the Society of Composers, SEAMUS, the International Computer Music Conference, the International Double Reed Society, and the College Music Society. His orchestral and wind ensemble works have received national prizes and are published by MMB Music (St. Louis), Ludwig Music (Cleveland), and Manhattan Beach Music.
A New York native, Hass studied at the Stecher and Horowitz School of Music and earned degrees from Vassar (B.A.), Rutgers (M.A.), and Indiana University (D.M.), working with Richard Wilson, Robert Moevs, Frederick Fox, Donald Erb, and Bernhard Heiden. His honors include the National Band Association Prize, the Walter Beeler Memorial Award, the Lee Ettelson Award, the U.S. Army Band 75th Anniversary Composition Competition, and the ASCAP/Rudolph Nissim Award. Recent projects fuse acoustic ensembles with electronics, 3D motion graphics, and interactive dance technologies; he was an inaugural Fellow of Indiana University’s Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities for research linking gesture and sound in performance.
Chi Wang is a composer and performer of electroacoustic music whose research and creative work focus on sound design, data-driven instrument creation, musical composition, and performance. Her works have been presented internationally at leading venues and conferences, including the International Computer Music Conference, New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Musicacoustica-Beijing, the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Kyma International Sound Symposium, Electronic Music Midwest, and the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music, among others. Her compositions have received wide recognition, including selection for SEAMUS CDs, the Best Composition from the Americas at the International Computer Music Conference, the Pauline Oliveros New Genre Prize from the International Alliance for Women in Music, the Award of Distinction at the MA/IN International Festival of Digital and Creative Culture, honors at the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music Competition Prix CIME, and finalist distinction at the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition.
Chi earned her D.M.A. in the Performance of Data-Driven Instruments from the University of Oregon. She is currently Associate Professor of Music (Composition: Electronic and Computer Music) at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
Alicyn Warren has been adjunct assistant professor of music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music since 2008. Warren is a composer of electroacoustic music whose pieces often include extra-musical elements: video images, text, or recognizable recorded sounds. She has received grants, prizes, and fellowships from the NEA, American Musicological Society, Columbia University Society of Fellows in the Humanities, and the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition. Warren earned a Ph.D. in music from Princeton University, where she studied with Paul Lansky, Steven Mackey, and Milton Babbitt. Her music and video works are available on the Centaur, Computer Music Journal, SEAMUS, and Le Chant du Monde labels. Before beginning to teach at the Jacobs School, Warren was a faculty member at the University of Michigan School of Music and School of Art & Design, the University of Virginia, and Columbia University.
