Andrea Parkins is a composer, sound artist and improvising
electroacoustic performer who engages with interactive electronics as
compositional/performative process, and explores strategies related to Fluxus’
ordered, ephemeral activities. She is an integral participant of the New York sound
art and experimental music communities, and known worldwide for her pioneering
gestural/textural approach on her electronically-processed accordion and
self-designed virtual sound-processing instrument. Described as a “sound-ist,” of
“protean,” talent by music critic Steve Smith, Parkins’ laptop electronics and
Fender-amped accordion create sonic fields of lush harmonics and sculpted electronic
feedback, punctuated by moments of gap and rift. Parkins’ compositions include
multi-diffusion site-based installations featuring amplified objects,
electroacoustic solo and ensemble pieces, electronic music pieces, and live
scores/sound design for dance and film. Her work has been presented at the Whitney
Museum of American Art, The Kitchen, Diapason, and Experimental Intermedia; and
international festivals/venues including Mexico City’s 1st International Sound Art
Festival, NEXT in Bratislava, Cyberfest in St. Petersberg, and Q-02 in Brussels.
Parkins records and performs as a solo artist and has collaborated with sonic
innovators such as Otomo Yoshihide, David Watson, John Butcher, and Nels Cline,
among many others. On an ongoing basis, Parkins develops her primary performance
project, a series of interactive audio/visual works inspired by Rube Goldberg’s
circuitous machines. Recent projects: In 2013-2014, Parkins has been awarded artist
residencies at Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center in NYC and Q-02 Workspace for
Experimental Music and Sound Art in Brussels, where she has been composing a
multi-diffusion electroacoustic performance/installation, Three Rooms in the Memory
Palace. This season, she will tour in Europe with her solo project and in a new duo
project with Swiss experimental pianist/sound text poet Jacques Demierre. In
2013-14, Parkins’ multi-diffusion Faulty (Broken Orbit) is featured in “With Hidden
Noise,” a sound art exhibition organized by Independent Curators International that
has been presented in Melbourne (Australia), Seattle, Minneapolis and NYC. Other
recent projects include Austell 1, an 8-channel performance/installation presented
in 2012 by Fragmental Museum, NYC, for which the artist funneled real-time sound
from Long Island City’s rail yards into an adjacent reverberant warehouse, along
with sonic interventions from a walking bell-ringer and Parkins’ omni-diffused
accordion feedback. Also, in 2012, Parkins performed a new audiovisual work at
Experimental Intermedia, NYC, in collaboration with video artist Ana Carvalho. Her
“portable” audio work featured in the Lingua Franca show at Cyberfest 2011 in St.
Petersburg, Russia, and Parkins was invited by Christian Marclay to perform her
interpretations of seven of his graphic scores at the Whitney Museum’s 2010
retrospective festival of Marclay’s work. Since 2009, Parkins has been touring in
Europe with choreographer Vera Mantero’s production We Are Going to Miss Everything
We Don’t Need, for which Mantero commissioned Parkins’ live electroacoustic score,
featuring amplified performers, objects and surfaces; and since 2010, Parkins has
performed her live 12-channel sound design for Symptom, an intermedia performance
work commissioned by The Body Cartography Project. Parkins’ recordings have been
published by Important Records, Atavistic, and Creative Sources, and her work has
received support from American Composers Forum, NYSCA, the French-American Cultural
Exchange, Meet the Composer, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, and Frei und
Hanseastadt Hamburg Kulturbehoerde. Parkins is on faculty at Goddard College’s MFA
in Interdisciplinary Arts program.
