Judson-Morrissey 2021 Fellow: Sal Moreno
Sal Moreno (he/ him)
I’m an artist and musician based in Chicago, IL. I’ve spent the past 2 years pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in Art and Technology, focused on the development of extended reality projects (XR includes virtual, augmented, and mixed reality). My practice focuses on the way that different aspects of the body can be utilized, modified, and extended to engage with our evolving relationship with emerging technology. Motion-capture has become a core anchor that weaves together elements of performance, sound, and computer-generated visuals. By integrating motion-capture into live performance, I am able to play and interact with visuals and sounds generated by the body in real-time, creating an exchange that further bridges the physical and the digital realms.
Sal was a recipient of a 2021 Judson-Morrissey Excellence in New Media Award.
Tell us a little about your background and your trajectory as an artist/ scholar.
My first true commitment to the arts occurred in the 6th grade when I was introduced to percussion. I still remember the music teacher’s opening line: “Welcome to the world of drums!”. He then proceeded to show us all of the different percussion instruments that were in the classroom, and from then on I was hooked. I stuck with the percussion section throughout the rest of middle school, and was part of the drumline for the entirety of my high school experience.
At UC San Diego, I found myself beginning my undergraduate education trying my hand at STEM majors. Drifting through fields such as Aerospace Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Computer Science, I quickly discovered that these were not the right fit for me and made my way into Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts (ICAM). What intrigued me about ICAM was how the curriculum included courses from the Computer Science department. I still had a keen interest in computer programming, and I was curious about how I would be able to combine CS with the arts.
While I was an undergrad, I continued my heavy involvement with independent drum corps and percussion ensembles. Traveling to rehearsals and competitions consumed my weekends and made it feel as if I was leading a completely separate life from school. It was around the time when I aged-out that I switched my major to ICAM, and came to the realization that I could combine my experience of drumming with my studies and research.
And that’s what I’ve really been digging into these past 2 years as a grad student. Dissecting different aspects of my experience in marching band and making projects out of them. Using rhythm and movement, aspects that have been ingrained into my mind and muscle memory, in tandem with XR technologies, to re-frame and reshape these established Western concepts of synchronicity, coordination, and musicianship.
What are some of your main influences?
My experience with the marching arts! The physical and mental intensity of this activity has been so imprinted into the way I think that there will always be remnants of it within my work.
I wouldn’t have been able to get to where I am now in my research without the influence of Milford Graves. I learned about the professor during my first semester of grad school, and getting to know his work, his philosophy, and his soul has been an inspiration that has carried me through the rigor of MFA. The connections between drumming and the martial arts was introduced to me back in my high school marching band days, but his documentary “Full Mantis” had a huge impact on allowing these ideas to resurface and expanded my mind on how I could engage with them.
What are you working on now?
I am currently working on my MFA thesis performance. The performance integrates and fuses the physical, virtual, and sonic realms through the interaction with a marching snare drum. Traditionally, the activity of marching band, drum corps, and percussion ensembles emphasizes uniformity, precision and accuracy as points of focus for developing shows and participating in competitions. Training musicians to perform in a cohesive manner, individually contributing to a whole and behaving as a single unit is a defining quality of this activity.
This performance shifts the focus to a more free-form method of drumming influenced by digital sound generated and manipulated by the body, made possible by wearing a motion capture suit. The sounds consist of digital synths and archival audio from previous percussion ensembles I was part of. Utilizing movements to warp this audio represents the dismantling of what I perceive to be an experience which limited creative expression at the level of the individual.
The visual component of the work offers insight into an expansive virtual space that gives representations of the tools (drumsticks, drum), sound, and the body. The use of lighting and filters allows for the virtual scenes to become part of the physical space. The relationship between the physical and virtual reinforces the liberation from the conventions of the marching arts. This feedback loop propels the performance and pushes that which is typically expected from and associated with a marching snare drum.