October 31, 2022

Sean Russell Hallowell is a composer and audiovisual artist from San Francisco. His time-based artworks synthesize experimental techniques developed from hand-built electronic circuitry with a cosmological perspective on music’s origins in number and periodicity. Concert works, fixed media pieces, and multimedia compositions of his have been performed at festivals across the United States as well as in Mexico, Chile, South Korea, Japan, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and Iceland. Recent immersive audiovisual works have been installed at galleries in San Francisco, New York City, and London. Much of his art is inspired by the compositional affordances of outmoded media technologies, like analog audiotape and cathode-ray tube televisions. Thematic areas of inquiry include the phenomenology of time and music in relation to its cognate disciplines in Medieval philosophy — i.e. arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. He holds degrees in music from Columbia University (PhD) and Brown University (BA).

Recounted Time

Recounted Time is a multichannel audiovisual work composed for the TSI/Harland Snodgrass gallery that explores the relationship between analog and digital signal architectures through the lens of macro-physical temporalities. It places abstract patterns generated by an analog video synthesizer designed by the composer in counterpoint to documentary footage of natural environments. It thereby aims to induce critical reflection on our habitual discretization of reality, which is inherently continuous and dynamic.