32 Sounds
32 Sounds
This event occurred as part of the 23/24 Hop Presents season. This is an archived view.
An immersive documentary and sensory experience from filmmaker Sam Green that explores the elemental phenomenon of sound.
23/24 Hop PresentsShortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, 32 Sounds is a meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders and shape our perception of the world around us. Featuring a series of 32 vignettes, each is about a specific audio recording that hits an emotional, political or conceptual note. These notes reflect a broad range of sonic and cultural experiences for a meditation on the ephemeral nature of sound, its relationship with time and perception, and importantly, the subtle yet radical politics that arise from being present in one's body. Examples of these notes include John Cage and his famous piece 4'33" , Cicadas and Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening .
The film will be screened in its "live cinema" form, complete with individual headphones for each audience member and featuring live narration by Sam Green.
Commissioned by Stanford Live, Stanford University; The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi; Green Music Center of Sonoma State University; Arizona Arts Live at University of Arizona; and developed through a creative residency at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts.
This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and by the James C. Hampton '76 Fund.
Photos: Catalina Kulczar
Sam Green(director, writer, editor) is a New York-based documentary filmmaker. Green's most recent live documentaries include A Thousand Thoughts
(with the Kronos Quartet) (2018), The Measure of All Things
(2014), The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller
(with Yo La Tengo) (2012), and Utopia in Four Movements
(2010). With all of these works, Green narrates the film in-person while musicians perform a live soundtrack. Green's 2004 feature-length film, The Weather Underground
, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for an Academy Award, was included in the Whitney Biennial and has screened widely around the world. Learn more about Green: https://samgreen.to/
JD Samson(composer) is best known as leader of the band MEN and for being one-third of the electronic-feminist-punk band and performance project Le Tigre. For more than a decade Samson's career as a visual artist, musician, producer, and DJ has landed her at the intersection of music, art, activism, and fashion. She has toured the world, produced songs for Grammy award winning artists, written for publications such as The Huffington Post
, Talkhouse
and Creative Time Review
, created multimedia artwork, hosted documentary programs, acted, modeled and engaged in direct support with a wide-range of progressive social and political causes. Samson is now an Assistant Arts Professor at New York University's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. Learn more about Samson: http://www.jdsamson.info/
Nels Bangerter(editor) is the award-winning documentary film editor of Cameraperson, Let the Fire Burn, Dick Johnson is Dead
and The Hottest August
. He has been nominated for two News & Documentary Emmys, he is a two-time winner at the Cinema Eye Honors for Best Editing, and he has won four International Documentary Association awards. Bangerter has also been an advisor at the Sundance Edit Labs, as well as for Firelight Media, the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Bay Area Video Coalition, and Film Independent. He is based in Oakland, California.
Yoni Brook(cinematographer) is a filmmaker and cinematographer. As a director, his films have screened at Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the New York and Toronto Film Festivals, True/False Film Festival and International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. His credits include the eight-part docuseries Philly D.A.
(PBS/Topic, Gotham Award Winner, Best Breakthrough Nonfiction Series), Menashe
(Independent Spirit Nominee, A24, directed by Joshua Z Weinstein) and Valley Of Saints
(Independent Spirit Nominee, Sundance World Dramatic Audience Award Winner, directed by Musa Syeed). His directorial debut, A Son's Sacrifice
, won Best Documentary Short at the Tribeca Film Festival, International Documentary Association's Best Documentary Short and broadcast on PBS Independent Lens.
Mark Mangini(film sound designer) is an Oscar winning ( Mad Max Fury Road ) and five-time Oscar nominated Sound Designer known for films including Dune, Blade Runner 2049, Star Treks I, IV , and V, The Fifth Elemen t and Gremlins . He has spent his 45-year career in Hollywood imagining and composing altered sonic realities for motion pictures. He is a frequent lecturer, an outspoken proponent for sound as art, and a guitarist/songwriter with compositions in sex, lies and videotape, Star Trek IV, Picard and more. He is a member of the Screen Actor's Guild, Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
Michael Amacio(associate sound design & technical direction) is a well-known live sound engineer and production manager. Amacio has worked for some of the world's most important art institutions like MoMA PS1, MoMA (Museum of Modern Art-NYC), renowned techno club Output, as a touring live sound engineer for The Magnetic Fields & Sevdaliza, production manager for the 3000 capacity multi-purpose NYC event space Knockdown Center and most currently as Production/Tour manager for The Philip Glass Ensemble. As Production Manager for Quo Vadis, a production company dedicated to exposing experimental music, his role varies with his main responsibility focusing on ensuring the best-sounding events in NYC.
Nico Cabalquinto(lighting design) is a Brooklyn-based light artist, designer and creative technologist that uses digital fabrication tools, audiovisual equipment and interactive technologies for their light sculptures and installations to transform public spaces, blur material boundaries and enhance live performances. They completed their postdoctoral artist residency at NYU Tisch's Interactive Telecommunications Program, where they earned their Masters of Professional Studies. They have shown their light and sound installations at Knockdown Center, Elsewhere, National Sawdust and in various art and music festivals.
Josh Wertheimer(live sound design) has been making and doing sound in various New York City buildings for several decades, and has mixed thousands of bands and performances that you have mostly never heard of. He is also a photographer.
ArKtype/Thomas O. Kriegsmann(producer) specializes in new work development and touring worldwide. His past work includes projects with Kaneza Schaal, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Peter Brook, Victoria Thiérrée-Chaplin, Yael Farber, Anna Deavere Smith, Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, Lisa Peterson, Peter Sellars, Julie Taymor, John Cameron Mitchell and Tony Taccone. Recent premieres include 600 HIGHWAYMEN's A Thousand Ways
, Bryce Dessner's Triptych (Eyes Of One On Another)
, John Cameron Mitchell's The Origin Of Love
, Kaneza Schaal and Christopher Myers' Cartography
, Sam Green and Kronos Quartet's A Thousand Thoughts
, Big Dance Theater and Mikhail Baryshnikov's Man In A Case
, and Nalaga'at Deaf-Blind Theater's Not By Bread Alone
. Ongoing collaborators include 600 HIGHWAYMEN, Big Dance Theater, Rude Mechs, Adrien M. & Clare B., Noche Flamenca, Toshi Reagon, and Compagnia TPO. Upcoming premieres include Scott Shepherd's This Ignorant Present
with Malthouse, Sam Green's 32 Sounds
, and Nora Chipaumire's Nehanda
. He is a founding member of CIPA (The Creative & Independent Producer Alliance). More information at arktype.org
.
Josh Penn(producer) is a producer with the Department of Motion Pictures. He produced Beasts Of The Southern Wild , which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, the Cannes Caméra d'Or and was nominated for four Academy Awards (including Best Picture). In addition, Penn was nominated for Outstanding Producer at the 2013 Producer's Guild Awards. He has produced Monsters And Men (Sundance Special Jury Prize), Philly D.A. (Winner of the 2021 Gotham Award for Breakthrough Nonfiction Series), the live documentary A Thousand Thoughts , Wendy, Users (Sundance Film Festival's 2021 Best Directors Award) and Farewell Amor , among others. He was an Executive Producer on Patti Cake$, Western (Sundance Film Festival's Special Jury Prize), The Great Invisible (South by Southwest's Grand Jury Prize) and Bloody Nose Empty Pockets . Penn and the Department of Motion Pictures had three films premiere at Sundance Film Festival 2020, and three more in the Sundance Film Festival 2021. In 2018, Penn became a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences. Outside of his work in film, Penn was previously the Michigan New Media Director for President Obama's 2008 campaign and a Senior Digital Program Manager for President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign.
The Program
“A unique and ephemeral experience…heady and spine-tingling…the filmed narrative is engaging and richly visual.”
The New York Times
“…a delightful, joyous film that changes the way you look at—or maybe listen to—the world.”
Vox
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