Rhiannon Catalyst is a multidisciplinary artist, vocalist, curator, and
artistic director. As an artist she’s particularly interested in exploring and
creating moments where personal, collective, and at times ancestral narratives
collide, as well as inspiring senses of connection and wonder in science and the
natural universe, and sharing “a sense of place” through sound. She’s spent the last
two decades working professionally as an advocate of multimedia arts and culture,
creative resistance and DIY culture, creative technology, and art focused on
sustainability (primarily by curating and directing multimedia venues). Catalyst
creates site-specific multisensory performances and installations using sound,
light, movement, costumes and scents to tell stories. She creates, records, and
performs collaborative and often interactive sonic and theatrical pieces designed to
celebrate the unique acoustics of particular spaces and illuminate the cultural and
historical significance of particular locations and moments in time. Her work often
involves field recordings of rivers, oceans, cities, crossroads, and reverb from
ships, rockets, and cavernous spaces… places of great cultural exchange and
intense resonance. Her soundscape âCrossCurrentsâ was created in the bilge of a
sinking ship and premiered at Ataraxia: Tesseract. âResounding NYSCI,” created in
collaboration with musician, author, and ecologist David Rothenberg and recorded
largely in The Great Hall, was designed to celebrate the acoustics of the storied
space, The Worldâs Fair, and the spirit of innovation, and premiered at the World
Maker Faire / The New York Hall of Science. She started ambient / noise project
Whisp3rkick with Jeremy D. Slater and co-produced “Silence Becomes the Noise” for
the NoDAPL Noise compilation to benefit the Sioux Nation. She has an extensive
history of performing, songwriting and releasing albums with DJs and live electronic
projects with a few of her favorite performance highlights being the more unusual
locations like inside the rusted hull of a ship, under the Space Shuttle Endeavor
(for Yuriâs Night LA at the California Science Center), and on top of a German
military tank modified to carry turntables in the Love Parade SF as well as
countless traditional venues and stages like Central Park’s Summerstage. She’s
performed alongside as incredibly diverse range of people including legends Ari Up,
Lee Scratch Perry, and Tony Allen of Fela’s Africa 70. She’s recently curated and
performed twice for the Rubin Museum of Art, produced and performed an interactive
song backed by a choir for Secret City at Judson Memorial Church, curated and
created the scent for an immersive interplanetary EP release event for MEMBA (the
imagined planet SAGA I smells like thunderstorms, dirt, and spices), Creative
Directed Unity Earth Liftoff with official United Nations support, and she’s the
Tour Manager and Transmedia Strategist for BELLA GAIA (an award-winning immersive
and multimedia stage show combining NASA supercomputer data- visualizations, orbital
views of Earth, and live performances of music and dance). Her work with BELLA GAIA
and NASA has deeply inspired her art as well as her professional passion.
www.rhiannoncatalyst.com
