Assistant Professor Position in Performance Studies
Department of Art and Performance Studies, Xavier University

PUBLICATION (2018): "Soundwalking: A Creative and Meditative Art Practice Used to Foster a Sense of Stewardship for Local Waterways" published paper by Invisible Places 2017: Sound, Urbanism, and Sense of Place. Select pgs. 150-163.

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PORTFOLIO of SELECTED PERFORMANCES and DESIGN ENGAGEMENTS 


​1. SleepWalks: Body of Dreams–Excerpts (2016 and 2018)
TECHNOLOGY: ABLETON LIVE, EEG HEADBANDS/MATLAB (Dr. Todd Anderson), VIDEO PROJECTION
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SleepWalks: The Body of Dreams was an art exhibit and 45-minute multi-media dance performance based on the collaborative dreams of participants of two SleepWalks overnight soundscape performances. This project had its premiere at the Chapel + Cultural Center in Troy, NY, and it was supported by a NYSCA Community Arts Grant. It later was shown at Kaatsbaan International Dance Center as part of a dance residency. SleepWalks has been an active project with musician, Lee Pembleton since 2009. In 2012, we began working with Stanford University sleep scientist, Dr. Todd Anderson. In 2015, we began collaborating with Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company. For this project I was art director, co-composer, sound designer, and video designer. Another art exhibit of SleepWalks: The Body of Dreams was at Collar Works Gallery in Troy, NY in Spring 2017.  www.sleepwalks.org
3. Imaginary Futures (2018 and 2019), NYSCA State Grant
TECHNOLOGY: PRINT DESIGN, WATER LASER CUTTER, VIDEO AND SOUND EDITING, POWER TOOLS

​IMAGINARY FUTURES aims to be a launching point to form dialogues with the public to creatively and collectively take on bite-size pieces of climate change.

http://www.listeninglistening.com/imaginary-futures.html


3. Troy Waterways Project :: Riverfront Park Soundwalk (2014-ongoing)
TECHNOLOGY: PROTOOLS, MOBILE MP3 PLUGIN, WEBSITE, PARTICIPANT'S SMARTPHONE & HEADPHONES
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​Riverfront Park Soundwalk is a site-specific, 20-minute artist audio walking tour of Troy, NY's waterways presented as a solo exhibition at The Hart Cluett Museum in Troy, NY in 2016. It is a past, present, and future overview based on sound artist Andrea Williams’ historical and environmental research and interviews with Troy residents and water experts. Musical elements, soundscapes and the actual environment intermingle with fact and mythology told as fact by locals. At the end of the Riverfront Park Soundwalk, participants can share a dialogue together on their personal connection with the river or other local waterways and visions of the future of the Hudson River in Troy. http://www.listeninglistening.com/riverfront-park-soundwalk.html

4. Séance For Dead Horse Bay (2019)
TECHNOLOGY: Ableton Live, ProTools, Gongs, Singing Bowls

Video by Meredith Drum, sound by Andrea Williams. For pop-up gallery exhibit, Conditions of Exchange, at 80 Nassau Street, NYC, curated by Abigail Simon and Esther Boesche.

Through the 19th century and into the early 20th, the bay located near Brooklyn, NY was a dumping ground for bodies from neighboring horse rendering plants that manufactured glue and fertilizer. The video also pays tribute to Muybridge’s Horse in Motion from 1886. The video was shown in an old retail space in a changing room where the on-site mirror doubled the double image.


5. Leitfarbe at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center (2014) and at Roulette (2014), NYC
TECHNOLOGY: Ableton Live (keymapping), MakeyMakey, Electric Paint

​Leitfarbe is an electro-acoustic composition that involves interactive improvisation with the audience. Leitfarbe in German means “primary color” or “guiding color”. For this live sound art performance, the audience is invited to paint on large sheets of paper with black conductive paint– creating a long line that completes an open circuit. Once the painted line is dry and it connects with the floor-triggers, you can then step on the floor-triggers to change the sound samples. You can improvise live to create the immersive soundscape together.


​6. Architectural Body (2015)
at MOTEL Artist Residency
Innsbruck, Austria
TECHNOLOGY: Ableton Live/MaxforLive, Speakers, Mixer, Raspberry Pi, Singing Bowls) 

The beautiful nonprofit artist and architect space, MOTEL, was set to become an on-ramp for the highway. I was commissioned to create a piece for a benefit concert to give a sense of place by activating the entire sprawling space with sound. I found that the oil drums with speakers inside with water on top would make beautiful cymatic patterns. They represented the resonant bells of the city. I offered bells to the audience that represented the herds of cows and flocks of sheep that wore harmonious bells on the hillsides of the Alps that let farmers know that all were accounted for. I ended up working with the oldest bell foundry in Austria, Grassmayr Bell Foundry, who let me witness a private casting (and blessing) of the world's largest singing bowl. They also let me borrow several beautiful and very expensive singing bowls (bells) for my live performance. I recorded many field recordings from Innsbruck, and I ended up collaborating with another artist-in-residence, ludwig technique. Also artists Anna Lerchbaumer and Laura Boob. MOTEL was spared for several more months to provide cultural programming due to the PR generated by the performance. Also, the hosts of MOTEL were inspired to apply for grants and received Austrian grants to get field recorders and create soundmaps of Innsbruck to highlight other cultural areas of the city. 

​From the program for the 45-minute show:

New York sound artist, Andrea Williams, local Innsbruck mixed media artist, ludwig technique, and artists Anna Lerchbaumer and Laura Boob, form a collaborative sound and video performance that activates the unique and temporal site of the Motel, a platform and meeting place for national and international artists, and discrete thinkers from all disciplines. The site is slated for street development by the city of Innsbruck and will be available for traffic only from September 2015. It has gone through several permutations over time, including use by Grassmayr Bell Foundry who is donating instruments for the performance. Food and drinks will be provided by the Motel crew from 6 pm onwards. anna.lerchbaumer

Statement by the artists:

We are building on the mission of Motel: activating the space that is alive with sounds and unique character. The site itself is an architectural body that will resonate and provide a visceral feedback loop to the body of participants. Participants are then invited to improvise with small instruments to find their individual resonance within the outdoor space.

We want to explore the many recursive layers of interaction which occur within the space. Field recordings are used with the intent to activate the imagination, forming personal narratives for the participant. The recorded material reveals the unique architectural acoustics of Motel and also what is common to daily life of Innsbruck, Austria, sounds that may often go unnoticed on a conscious level. 
A temporary sculpture/installation forms a counter-point to the architectural structure of the Motel. Video installations utilizing feedback-loops magnify the movements and vibrations in the space, interacting with participants and the soundwaves.


7. Sanderlings for ReSound Series as part of San Francisco’s Flyway Festival (2016) (watch up to 5:21)

Vimeo link: ​https://vimeo.com/199417695

San Francisco’s Flyway Festival on Mare Island celebrates the peak bird migration in San Francisco Bay Area each year. I was offered a commission to perform in the ReSound Series in an empty military bunker that has prolonged resonance. The sanderlings are a common bird yet they are becoming less common from beach erosion and oil spills. I posed the question: Why do we wait until a species is endangered to care so much about it? I created a piece that includes video that I filtered to high contrast black and white of sanderlings and the San Francisco Bay near Mare Island to allow a sense of a graphic novel. It is perceived as more flat than color, like a blank canvas that one can place oneself into while paying more attention to the sounds. I performed maritime field recordings and stringed instrument recordings that turned bubbly and thick sounding. As the sandlerlings disappeared like stars burning out, two upside down oil drums on wooden pallets with speakers inside were activated out into the audience. A stereo bell piece was performed as though the oil drums were bells. Water on top formed a vibrational cymatic pattern that was illuminated. I then handed out bells to the audience to perform with me as I played a sound of a heartbeat and finished with a singing bowl resonating the space.
 
This piece was partially composed at MOTEL in 2015, a three-week long artist residency in Innsbruck, Austria with Glockengiesserei Grassmayr, the local bell (and singing bowl) foundry and museum, founded in 1599.







8. Oceanic (2007) at SolarOne, NYC
TECHNOLOGY: Cracker Box Amp circuit modified to be powered by diode in series with the motor and battery, inverter and bicycle pedal-powered; contact mic inside drain pipe from highway

I received a grant through Target for the New York Society for Acoustic Ecology to construct an alternative powered Sound Garden for CitySol 2007 at Solar One in Manhattan. Along with curating projects by the NYSAE, I created an installation called Oceanic, that was a contact-miked drain pipe feeding the distorted sounds of the raised highway to an amp that I built that was powered by a found exercise bicycle. The idea was that the cars on the highway above would provide the calming white noise in the drain pipe necessary to block out their own noise and the more noisy traffic sounds below in the street adjacent to the 1.3 acre wildlife preserve at Solar One. The rider faces the ocean, and the sounds coming from the speaker often sounded like ocean waves, or the "sound" of outer space.
​One older couple would come frequent the spot in the mornings during the week of the exhibit. The wife told me that her husband was a retired veteren, and exercising on the bicycle with the drone sound improved his well-being. (see picture of husband enjoying his morning routine).   

PUBLIC and STUDENT WORK 

​Water-witching Instruction Piece, 2017 A. Bartol 3 min willow branch, copper L-rods, and drain plug on chain​

1. Anthropological Snapshot, an impromtu Listening Exercise at Anthropocene Campus Lisboa: Parallax conference (2020)

Anthropological Snapshot: Participants are given a notecard and they have five minutes to wander and write down the first full sentence or sound that they here in the area. They then gather and recite the sentence exactly as they heard it as a performance together. The eavedropping observers become the observed. The aim of the exercise is to pause and focus on listening to the space that we inhabit and the people who live there or pass by, to give us a deeper understanding of the area in this particular moment in time. This was for Anthropocene Campus Lisboa: Parallax, organized by the Interuniversity Center for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT) and hosted by Culturgest, in partnership with Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), from January 6-11, 2020. 



​2. Mobile Storytelling Workshop at Santa Fe Art Institute (2017)
TECHNOLOGY: Smartphone, headphones, Audacity, laptops 

​Participants spent a minute starting into each others' eyes for 2 minutes, trying to not look away. They then interviewed each other for about 5 minutes each on a time that they spent in or near water, while the story was recorded. They then decided that they would either develop their own stories or their partner's with some sound design and instructions for their audience on what gesture or gestures in sequence they are to embody while listening to the piece. The final piece must only be 1-3 minutes long. The piece played here for the exhibit open to the public is by artist, Alana Bartol, who developed her dowsing story with props for the audience. 


​3. Two-week Mobile Storytelling Workshop in Deep Listening: Creative Collaboration Class at RPI (co-instructor with Professor Stephanie Loveless) (Spring 2017)

​Similar to above, only students had to tell each other's 5 minute stories in 1-2 minutes, not their own. Also, their projects were presented to the class not to the public. Please take a listen to Xiajun Guo (Tiffany)'s piece and her partner for the exercise, Lex Jiminez. Guo's is to be sitting down imagining that you are in the scene. For Jiminez' piece imagine you are walking through puddles and move around. Also fun is Jonathan Gottwald's piece. Lie comfortably on the ground for his piece. Several projects took the students outside. 

http://www.listeninglistening.com/mobile-storytelling.html



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​4. Palo Alto Arts Center (2010-2016) Instructor for Arts and Engineering with kids ages 5-18 

Each summer from 2010 to 2016 I taught students about various kinetic artists, how to light up LEDs, and how to connect a battery and a motor as basic circuits. They are then asked to create with art supplies, found material, and recyclables either 1) Art that asks a question or 2) A design that solves a world problem. Works can be iterations of larger ideas. Over three summers I brought all four classes to 50/50 girls and boys when the classes were all boys when I arrived. Also, I hosted some workshops for all-ages such as the LED Throwie Lanterns at the Super Happy Block Party Hackathon in Palo Alto. I encouraged people to create anti-war and Occupy symbols and toss the lanterns to stick to the metal in the parking garage. Palo Alto's mayor, Yiaway Yeh, got involved and a photo was published in the county paper: