Lili Maya ‣ Lili Maya

excerpts / Monteverdi’s Vespers performance

2020 — visual art for performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers — a maya + rouvelle collaboration.

Our studio created the visual art for for the March 1, 2020 performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers at Shriver Hall in Baltimore. The performers included the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, Washington Cornett and Sackbutt Ensemble, Baltimore Baroque Band, and Peabody Renaissance Ensemble, all conducted by Blake Clark.

Our video project included entirely original footage shot in Italy, Spain, and the US. Some of the imagery is based on, and includes excerpts from works by Fra Angelico, Andrei Rublev, Jan Van Eyck, Aert van der Neer, Mosaics from the Basilica di San Marco, Venice, and The Osservanza Master.

The complete videos we made for each movement with the Vespers conducted by John Eliot Gardner, as well as some writing on the project are here. Still images from the concert are here.

gravitating

lili maya - gravitating

2019 — dimensions variable — digital print [original work / assemblage with leaves, paper, electronics]

standing wave

lili maya - standing wave

2018 — dimensions variable — digital print [original work / acrylic and ink on paper]

pulse, drift, ping, echo

2018 — installation — a maya + rouvelle collaboration.

pulse, drift, ping, echo is an installation for the Cooper-Hewitt’s The Senses: Design Beyond Vision exhibit curated by Ellen Lupton and Andrea Lipps.

The individual glass pieces were made at a residency at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, a residency at Pilchuck Glass School and at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn.

In addition to kinetic and sonic qualities produced by electromagnetism, this new installation includes a haptic section where visitors can touch the glass and feel resonant frequencies pulsing through specific objects.

Inspired by the translucence of glass, our work embodies invisible forces indexed in the shapes, behaviors and sensual qualities of each object. Electromagnetism and code influence the movements of round neodymium magnets inside some of the pieces. The resulting sounds reveal unique acoustic properties.

from the exhibition label:

“Inside two display cases are glass volumes in the shape of cones, domes, and droopy tubes. Tiny metal spheres roll around inside the vessels, tapping lightly against the glass. These little spheres are powerful magnets. Installed underneath the tabletop are electromagnets. The tiny spheres change direction when the electromagnets switch their polarity from north/south to south/north. Created by Lili Maya and James Rouvelle, the piece sounds delicate and irregular, like falling rain.

Some glass shapes are exposed on the tabletop. Artists Lili Maya and James Rouvelle created this special touch component of their piece especially for this exhibition.”

The work is also featured in the exhibition catalog, available here: http://shop.cooperhewitt.org/p/8615/The-Senses-Design-Beyond-Vision

river and state

maya.rouvelle-river-and-state

2018 — performance — a maya + rouvelle collaboration.

Photo courtesy of Mert Erdem and Michael Wilson.

River and State was commissioned by the ICOA Chamber Orchestra, Daniel Feng, Conductor, as part of their New World/New Music series. The piece is in honor of the 125th anniversary of Antonin Dvorak’s 9th Symphony, From the New World, and was premiered at the Bohemian National Hall in NYC. The accompanying composition is Dvorshock by Bruce Adolphe – also commissioned by the ICOA. The premiere of River and State featured a live performer, Laura King-Pazuchowski, on stage with the orchestra, interacting with the VR environment we developed. This video was captured from within the VR environment used during the performance. The music is a live recording of Dvorshock.

Our concept for this virtual cinema performance is about the promise of a new world, its unlimited potentials, personal freedoms and inevitable progress, and how technology has always played a role in these fantasies.

Our performer, Laura King-Pazuchowski traversed the membrane of our shared environment of lived experience and the fantasy of virtual, illimitable, dream-space.

The VR environment features renderings of Lower Manhattan, Inwood Hill Park, Ellis Island, and an amalgam of different Subway stations. The piece is also inspired by observing flash floods on certain Manhattan streets built above drained streams. whose resulting chaos suggest the transposed, consistent presence of foundational forces occluded by the trappings of contemporary material culture.

The Tulips are a reference to the Tulip tree of Inwood Hill Park where the initial meeting, and subsequent purchase of Manhattan from the Native population occurred. The tree died in the 1933. The sculpture of the Tulips encountered during the capsule scene is a rendering of a currently infamous Jeff Koons sculpture that has a connection to the Statue of Liberty.

The metronome seen at the beginning on the shore returns in the final scene as a monument sized rendering of Man Ray’s “Indestructible Object”. The character in front of the metronome in the final scene is a rendering of the actor.

Full Flickr set/video here.

video and additional information on mayarouvelle.com