Baker Artist Portfolios

I have performed extensively using a wearable performance interface I invented called "the manDrum" - It allows me to play drums on my body. I interface that with a program I wrote in Max/MSP (a visual, object oriented programming environment) that allows me to generate audio - e.g. bass and chords in arbitrary timbres on top of the drums I'm playing. Since I'm triggering MIDI events, instead of recording audio, I can orchestrationally change the sounds of what's being played on the fly .

notmares was written as a world premiere for the 40th anniversary of the Peabody Electronic and Computer Music Studio in November 2009.

I wrote it as a collaboration with soprano/violinist Bonnie Lander. It is rather "cheeky" insofar as the worst possible thing that could happen at a computer music concert isn't really that terrible. I tried to repurpose and remember things from the 20 years I'd been in Baltimore. Here's the program note I wrote for the premiere:

notmares
Dreams are the gestalt of our past and future experiences.

These experiments in "Reductive Video" are an homage to the work of Eadweard Muybridge, Etienne-Jules Marey, and Thomas Eakins, bringing their ideas into the 21st century by highlighting the changes in motion and movement as experienced and recorded by technology. Video is captured and processed, comparing one frame of video against the next. Only those pixels that differ from the previous frame are then displayed. These changes are then also compiled into a single print.

The Bricoleur Dream Brigade is the first psychological machine in my series on ‘philosophical toys and psychological machines’. The BDB are an underground, vigilante, rogue group who have formed to protect the sanctity of the dream state from the corrosive thoughts of everydayness. The BDB place extreme importance in dreaming, as a way to problem solve, promote escapism and to restore/conserve the mind from an information bombed world. (I would not normally disclose this but I think it is important for you to also know that I am the only current member of this fictitious organization.)

In our society we're bombarded with messages on how to become the perfect you. It suggests that if youâ??re not living up to your fullest potential, you are a disappointment, a failure.
The great American myth is that anyone can grow up to be president. If you have the dedication & willpower, you can be anything. Luckily, if you donâ??t have the strength to do it on your own, there's a host of people waiting for you to pay them to tell you just how to do it.

A survey of cell phone use (dependency, fear of cancer, dreams, intimacy) was conducted via said cell phones while portraits of the subjects were drawn. This project was done way back in 2007? Before we were fully addicted to our phones. Back when they were objects of consideration.

A series of daylight observatories were constructed and participants invited to lie down & relax. Previously undiscovered constellations were viewed: chocolate disappointment, deer in headlights, handlebar mustache.... Many found themselves so absorbed and calmed by the new discoveries they drifted off to a meditative sleep in the middle of the crowd, Privacy in a public place.

6 Celestial of 3'x2'x3' were placed in a ring 20 feet in diameter.

Naptime was an installation piece in which people were invited to enter the room the piece was housed in and take a nap with a giant stuffed rabbit, or to somehow interact with the piece. The walls of the room had "domestic" sized paintings on the wall.

The rabbit is 12 feet long and hand sewn and dyed. The paintings are various sizes and are acrylic on wallpaper and decorative paper.

Installation based on performance

Video of a wishing well and a bucket of pennies.

Double Barrel was a solo show exhibition held at Space 1026 in Philadelphia. Double Barrel is consisted of two installations and a group of paintings. The Worm, being the main installation piece, and the Human Anatomy (Male + Female). All panels are cut out by a jig saw, and sand it down with 100 tooth sand paper, primed, and painted with acrylic + latex paint.