Pauline Oliveros

Birth : 1932-05-30,

History

Pauline Oliveros (born May 30, 1932 in Houston, Texas) is an American composer and accordionist who is a central figure in the development of experimental and post-war electronic art music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, and served as its director. She has taught music at Mills College, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Oliveros has written books, formulated new music theories and investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of "Deep Listening" and "sonic awareness".

Movies

I Hope I'm Loud When I'm Dead

Music

Reframing our current political moment in intimate terms, Gibson’s urgent snapshot of worldwide social calamities doubles as a document of practical resistance. In Gibson’s hands, the music of Pauline Oliveros and the words of poets CA Conrad and Eileen Myles imbue images of street riots, the Grenfell Fire, and the mass refugee migration with complexity and grace.

Fogo

Music

The deterioration of a small community in Fogo Island is forcing its inhabitants to leave and resettle. Places once occupied by humans are now becoming part of the tundra landscape. In spite of a condemn future, there are some residents who decide to remain, holding on to their memories and grieving for the past, when life in Fogo was different.

On the Other Ocean

Original Music Composer

You there. It's late. Imagine yourself with the lid coming down. The hymns and requiems. The sense of movement as you're borne along to the next place.

skin•es•the•si•a

Music

How does a woman’s body move? skin•es•the•si•a scrambles the cultural codes of female movement by juxtaposing images from the work of performance artist Hannah Sim with images of Sim working as a nude dancer in a peep show. It explores the rapport between one woman’s body and two performance environments. How are women perceived and typed through our own physical movements? What might a response of power to these codes and norms look like? What do we discover by embracing our otherness, by transforming it into a means of confronting the world?

The Sensual Nature of Sound: 4 Composers Laurie Anderson, Tania Leon, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros

Herself

The Sensual Nature of Sound portrays four New York based composers and performers in terms of their musical lives and artistic passion. Though Laurie Anderson, Tania Leon, Meredith Monk and Pauline Oliveros are all pioneers in American music, each composer pursues a distinct direction of her own. Their rehearsals and performances show a common pursuit of lyrical storytelling through which a new set of contemporary narratives has been forged. Through body, sound, movement and composition, these women have forged their own path through the wild world of modern music.

Music with Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television by Robert Ashley

Himself

In 1975 the composer Robert Ashley embarked on an ambitious work titled Music With Roots in the Aether. He called it an Opera (or piece of theater depending on the case) for television. The work is comprised of seven, two hours sections. Each “episode” is dedicated to investigations, interviews, and performances of his one of his peers – David Behrman, Philip Glass, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, and Terry Riley respectively, with the final reserved for himself.

Clown

Music

A woman remembers the moments with her lover and believes she's made herself ridiculous. She's become a clown.

Contacts

Music

Super obscure experimental short film. Very raw and primitive, it features a great soundtrack made of amazing psychedelic abstract electronic music (the song is “I Of IV” by electronic music pioneer Pauline Oliveros), which is probably what makes this short some kind of mesmerizing experience

Lightning Waterfall Fern Soup

Music

Short experimental film by Shelby Kennedy

The Covenant

Music

Dance film of work by choreographer Elizabeth Harris with original score by Pauline Oliveros. The score is for prepared piano and was performed live during the filming. Harris was a frequent collaborator with Oliveros at the Tape Music Center in San Francisco.