ALOTones

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: albums • interactive
06 Jun

ALOTones was an advertising campaign from Agency Magma in NYC. For this campaign I was commissioned to write seven original tracks for the seven flavors of ALO. On the side of each bottle of the drink in stores was a QR Code where the person could scan the code and download an original piece of Mikronesia music that was written to embody that flavor. Here’s a sample track:

As a viral video campaign Agency Magma created some videos of artists drinking the ALO Drink, listening to my music and creating original illustrations in response.

Here’s one of the video experiments:

Here’s a video explaining the whole campaign and the product in more detail:

Hutch Demouilpied – Otherness – Herzog (Remix)

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: albums
31 Jan

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Remix for British musician and composer Hutch Demouilpied’s 2012 album Otherness released on Entropy Records.


Download from bandcamp

Where It Was, There I Shall Be

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: installation
10 Apr

Mixed Media Installation (materials, sound, video and photographs) by Michael McDermott, Derek Moench and Megan Cauley. This installation explored the concept of “The Shadow Self” by Carl Jung.

The piece was a giant stone well with a video screen at the bottom playing a video loop of a human figure in free fall. Around the well were positioned 8 speakers playing a continuously shifting soundscape of original music.

Where It Was, There I Shall Be from Michael McDermott on Vimeo.

Tomas

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: performances
22 Oct

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Flute Quartet by Michael McDermott entitled Tomas. Performed by Danielle Brosious, Bob Carpency Heather Fortune, Jacquelyn Howell on flutes and Michael McDermott on electronics. This was part of a performance at Nexus Gallery, ParaphraseNexus and made possible by a grant from the Argosy Foundation. 

Below a live recording of the piece:

Host

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: albums
09 Sep

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Sound artist Mikronesia has embarked on his stillest and most minimal album to date. Host is a two part tale of journeying. The first track contains field recordings taken from a winter camping trip at World’’s End State Park. Part one (“Snow Wind Cast Into The Fire Well”) explores the art of texture, using minimal chord changes and melody but presenting them in contrast to the textured field recordings. The second part uses pure sine waves to explore the overtone series of the note “C”. “Pure” uses clean sound to create a state of timeless stillness, slowly tearing apart the very fabric of tone.

Available from bandcamp

Assembling Minutiae

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: dance • film
05 Sep

For the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2008. I composed a piece of music called “Pure” for a new dance / film piece by my colleagues Perpetual Mvmt<>Snd. The music I came up with was a slowly building wash of sine waves that uses frequencies found in the note middle C on the piano. The hypnotic sequence builds slowly and almost inaudibly as the lowest frequencies are introduced.

The live dance performance (by Emily Sweeney) was presented at NEXUS/Foundation for Today’s Art at the Crane Arts building. The set was designed by interdisciplinary artist bilwa. The minimal white washed film was created by Blaine Seigel and had movement by Emily Sweeney, Rebecca Patek and Jil Stifel.

Below is an excerpt from the film.

Assembling Minutiae (Excerpt) from Michael McDermott on Vimeo.

Harold Budd – Midnight Leaves of London

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: film
08 May

As part of the 2008 Bath Music Festival prolific pianist and composer Harold Budd put out a call for people to create videos of themselves recording his composition “Midnight Leaves of London”.

Filmmaker Derek Moench and I did a few variations for this project including a cool David Lynch inspiried reverse performance. We also did this more glitchy one below:

GATE (2008)

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: performances
18 Apr

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2008 GATE performance of piano and electronics. This performance had visuals by VJ Marge.

vxvii

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: albums
20 Jan

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This is one of my person favorite recordings I’ve ever done. It was one of the first things I recorded in our new studio in the house we bought in 2006. The album was described by label kaki as “experimental, shuffling ambient and glitching sound scapes”. It was released on the kikapu net label in 2008, which has since closed up shop. It was downloaded nearly 20,000 times since it’s release. It’s now available on bandcamp as a “pay what you wish” release.

Written and produced by Mikronesia

Available from bandcamp