Documentation of Fire Museum Present's A Page of Madness (1926, dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa) with a live score by me and the Totally Automatic new music ensemble.

For the performance, I operated a modular synthesizer receiving control voltage from the film via image-analyzing software I created in Max/MSP. Musical parameters including tempo, volume, and timbre were all affected by brightness, motion, and acceleration values.

The performance took place December 8 2023 and was commissioned by Fire Museum Presents with funding from the Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities.

Special thanks to Totally Automatic for going on this adventure with me.

Utilizing a collection of motion-analysis algorithms, the Max patch in this clip converts visual information into control voltage for the modular synthesizer used for the film screening.

An earlier version of the patch controlling a software-based FM synthesizer and a basic echo effect.

A play devised by the members of New Media Performance Project in response to David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross and the affordable housing shortage.

Directed by Matt O’Hare.

Company Retreat follows the experiences of a group of real estate agents as they embark upon a weekend of team-building exercises and seminars at a dilapidated campground in the Poconos. In the midst of a brutal housing market, the agents contend with questions of community while doing all they can to stay employed. All is well until a screening of the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, which sends the agents spiraling into chaos.

Company Retreat premiered at VCAM at Haverford College in Spring of 2022.

A video sequence featured in Company Retreat. Original music by Arielle Herman.

The pillowfight sequence from Company Retreat that marks the play's climax.

As part of David Dove's interpretive work, I played guitar with the Nameless Sound Ensemble. Above is first-person, binaurally-recorded documentation. Listen with headphones to hear the spatial effects.

Also note that audience members were encouraged to explore the space during the performance, resulting in a wide variety of experiences. Below the credits, you will find a timelapse version that speeds through the above documentation, succinctly revealing the contours of the piece.

"Sounding the Silos" was presented by Arts District Houston and Nameless Sound at The Silos at Sawyer Yards

June 21, 2022

Houston, Texas

Concert Produced by Fresh Arts, Sawyer Yards, and Nameless Sound

All Music by D. Dove/A. Bielish/T. Carter/L. Dykes/N. Guzman/J. Jackson/G. Kenyon/G. Martinez/R. McKee/R. Novak/R. OBrien/M. O’Hare/S. Paynter/A Żet

Documentation by Matt O'Hare

Handheld Binaural Audio and Video Recording by Rachel Orosco

Video Editing and Audio Mixing by Matt O'Hare

I was living in Houston, Texas when the city went into lockdown shortly after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many others, the extended period of isolation led to a variety of creative explorations to cope and pass the time.

These few compositions (and one improvisation) that I chose to record were my means of remaining in touch with the thrill of live performance and the music community I shared them with.

Each video was recorded in a single take with no overdubs.

An improvisation performed as part of the Nameless Sound 'Special Delivery' series where members of the Nameless Sound Ensemble would travel to the houses of local community members in Houston and perform short concerts outdoors. For many, these were the only live concerts they would experience during the pandemic lockdown.

AGAMA is a free improv duo consisting of musicians Aga Zet (synthesizers) and Matt O'Hare (guitar).

Collaborative Theatre Project's devised adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's NO EXIT. Directed by Matt O'Hare.

Premiered Summer of 2019 at EMPAC (Experimental Media and Performance Arts Center) in Troy, New York.

Excerpts from the Prism House and cakeface dance-theater production Stairway to Stardom (2017), which premiered at the HERE Center for the Arts in New York.

Video by Matt O'Hare. Music by Brian Wenner. Directed by Amanda Szeglowski.

Audio-visual content from the 'drunkclub' sequence.

The Cure For All Disease appropriates heavy metal aesthetics to comment on the impact of digital technology on culture. The two scenes featured here, "Blastbeats" and "Pentagram Walk" use responsive technologies to create a reciprocal relationship between me and the surrounding environment.

blastbeats (Blue Pentagram) utilizes voice-control to activate a responsive environment. Based in the language of black and extreme metal genres, blastbeats takes the form of a monologue accompanied by the rapid drumming of an instructional YouTube video.

Pentagram Walk (Goat Mask) uses motion-tracking to produce audible feedback that I use to inform my choreography. Utilizing an infrared camera and my own software, a blast of white noise is produced whenever I move through the performance space at a rate that exceeds a certain threshold. Moving faster than the threshold also induces changes in the musical and visual output of the responsive environment. The performance space becomes an extension of my struggle to maintain the slow-walk of the choreography, while using my "mistakes" as the impetus for creative changes within the supporting audio and visual media.

Excerpts from We The New Community created by Matt O'Hare.

WTNC took place at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, New York on May 7th, 2016. Full documentation may be found below.

Created by theatre artist Matt O'Hare, We The New Community is an experimental theatre piece that revisits the science-fiction inspired theology of fringe religious groups such as Heaven’s Gate and Scientology, projecting the technological optimism of the late 1990s into a not-too-distant future. Through a series of monologues, songs, and video, this workshop performance examines the thorny relationship between media technology and the power of belief.

With:

Utthara Rameshbabu

Maureen Anderson

Jane Thibeault

Matt O'Hare

and the voice of Amanda Gallo

For one year I had the good fortune to undertake a series of music performances centered on the Deaf experience. Working collaboratively with artists and composers Pauline Oliveros, Tarek Atoui, Johannes Goebel, and Michelle Temple, Tactile Music is my term for the three performances I either co-developed (Closed Captioning and Prototonic Improvisation) or participated in (Haptic Trio) that featured music created expressly for the purpose of being perceived through touch and vibration.

Each performance unfolds as a structured improvisation, where participants took cues primarily through haptic and visual feedback. The intention was to compose music inclusive of an audience with a broad diversity of sensory experience.

Closed Captioning took place December 8, 2015 at EMPAC. Prototonic Improvisation and Haptic Trio were part of an evening of performance called Within organized by composer Tarek Atoui while he was in residence at EMPAC. Free and open to the public, Within took place on May 13, 2016 in the lobby of EMPAC.