Alfred University News

Sean Russel Hallowell - Artist-in-Residence

Institute for Electronic Arts October 31- November 12. While in residence, Hallowell will have work on view in the TSI Harland Snodgrass Gallery and will give a hybrid analog + digital Live audio-visual performance on the Sandin IP with Eric Souther, Associate Professor of Video Art.


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).

The Institute for Electronic Art’s Experimental Projects Residency is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the Schein-Joseph Endowment.

While in residence, Hallowell will have work on view in the TSI Harland Snodgrass Gallery and will give a hybrid analog + digital Live audio-visual performance on the Sandin IP with Eric Souther, Associate Professor of Video Art. The performance will take place on November 10 at 7 pm in Holmes Auditorium.

Recounted Time, a multichannel audiovisual work composed by Hallowell for the TSI/Harland Snodgrass Gallery, 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. The exhibition will be on view through November 20.