U-M pond becomes scene of sculpture

ANN ARBOR—Eleven years of cross-discipline work and experimentation comes to fruition when Stephen Rush and the University of Michigan’s Digital Music Ensemble bring Gypsy Pond Music to U-M’s North Campus Nov. 5-11.

This free, computerized concert at the School of Music Pond, at the corner of Bonisteel and Murfin streets on U-M’s North Campus, runs from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. each day.

Students from music, art, engineering and dance make up the Digital Music Ensemble (DME) directed by Rush, an associate professor in the School of Music and a composer holding a position that includes music composition, technology, dance and art. Rush’s students work to collaborate in the creation of new work, performing innovative music/art works from the past, which have been largely ignored by mainstream academe.

This year’s concert of music and a floating sculpture on the pond includes an audio installation involving algorithmically conceived/articulated computer music. It is based on the element of confusion and error found in labyrinths such as in the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth, full of “double-backs” and “dead ends” meant to inform the penitent soul searching for guidance to “let go and let God.”

“The students were impressed with the fact that while the ‘goal’ may be perfectly obvious, our distractions keep us from the pursuit of even the most obvious objectives,