John Roach

ArtEcho (2021)

2021-2022

A commissioned prototype for Cooper Hewitt Interaction Lab's Activating Smithsonian Access. ArtEcho explores a selection of the museum's artifacts through sound.

This ongoing series of experiments on a green screen work surface combine sound improvisation with post processed video images. These sketches are a chance to "limber up" to let ideas happen and then to contextualize them visually after the fact.

You’re gonna be ready to burn it as soon as you tape it (2020)

2019-2020

This audio work was created for the project "The Dream Had Me" for Earlid, Curated by Joan Schuman. It recontextualizes unearthed minidisc recordings I created between 1999 and 2007. A revised audio biography and sonic reverie.

Earth’s Centre by Sterling Basement (2020)

2019-2020

Audio work created for Project Inferno, a celebration of the 700th Anniversary of Dante's Inferno presented at Cities & Memory. It explores the idea of gravity and as Dante and Virgil get close to Lucifer at the center of the planet, strange things begin to happen.

The Painlevé Exercises

2019-2020

This was a pandemic activity in which I created soundtracks for the remarkable films of Jean Painlevé. When brain-activity is challenged, let the images suggest the sounds.

Frozen Words at Local Project Art Space (2020)

2019-2020

Multi-channel sound installation. Immersive sound and glass objects forge an unlikely connection between an absurd work of 16th century literature, the ancient pseudo-science of alchemy, and political hate speech.

Warp and Weft / Warf + Wept – with Sandra Lapage (2019)

2019-2020

4-channel live sound performance at Ground Floor Gallery. A collaboration with the artist Sandra Lapage and a conversation with her installation Warp & Weft.

The Vein Flows below (2018)

2017-2018

Audio work created for the online project Earlid, curated by Joan Schuman that features recordings captured at the Marble House Project in Dorset Vermont, the site of an abandoned marble quarry in a village of abandoned marble quarries.

Pushing Buttons (2018)

2017-2018

Installation exhibited in the group show Pushing Buttons at Agnes Varis Art Center in Brooklyn, NY. It includes glass objects, dry ice, video, and viewer interaction that determines the playback of audio.

Symbiotext – with John Burns (2018)

2017-2018

A collaboration with research Scientist John Burns for the LIGO Project. It is a sound installation that explores connections between language and the transmission of genetic information.

2009 Squeak, tick-tick, crash! Storm Cow

2005-2009

Just added from the archives! a 2009 kids workshop in which we worked together to recreate the sounds of a storm.

Frozen Words Hot Air (2017)

2017-2018

Live performance at UrbanGlass with glass blowing, percussion and sound manipulation. It combines the alchemical qualities of glass, Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel and the words of Donald Trump.

Stone Cold Groove (2017)

2017-2018

A series of related works created during a Family residency at Marble House Project in July 2017. The title alludes to the three-part structure of the work with each word of the tile acting as an organizing theme.

The Internal Machine – Curated by John Roach (2017)

2017-2018

An exhibition that I curated for the Center for Book Arts in NYC inspired by the work of Italian designer and artist Bruno Munari.

Ocean Imaginaries – with Emma Critchley (2017)

2017-2018

A collaborative installation with Emma Critchley for the exhibition Ocean Imaginaries at RMIT in Melbourne. It combines her video with my sound installation.

Gene Splicing (2016)

2015-2016

A performance developed for the art and technology festival “9e2” (Nine Evenings 2) in Seattle, Washington. It uses the DNA data of two percussionists to influence the creation of a series of glass objects as well as the sequence of actions of those percussionists during the performance.