In all his creative activities, Tristan Perich is inspired by the aesthetics of math and physics, and works with simple forms and complex systems. The challenge of elegance provokes his work in acoustic and electronic music, and physical and digital art.
The WIRE Magazine describes his compositions as “an austere meeting of electronic and organic.” His works for soloist, ensemble and orchestra have been performed by ensembles including Bang on a Can (2008 People’s Commissioning Fund), counter)induction, Calder Quartet, New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Due East, Y Trio, Hunter-Gatherer and Ensemble Pamplemousse at venues from the Whitney Museum, P.S.1, Chelsea Art Museum, Mass MoCA, Merkin Hall, the Stone and Issue Project Room to Los Angeles’ Zipper Hall.
In 2004 he began work on 1-Bit Music to experiment with the foundations of electronic sound, culminating in a physical “album,” a music-generating circuit packaged inside a standard CD jewel case, which has been released by Cantaloupe Music. The Village Voice calls the device “technology and aesthetic rolled into one” and Surface Magazine calls the 1-Bit Music boxes “profound throwbacks to the traditional album, a response to the intangibility of iTunes and mp3s in the form hand-held artwork.” Working with
1-bit music profoundly influenced his music for acoustic ensembles, resulting in dual works for musicians with 1-bit music accompaniment, pairing the performers with on-stage speakers, each physically capturing a single voice from the electronic side of the composition.
His experimental music group, the Loud Objects (with Kunal Gupta and Katie Shima), perform electronic music by soldering their own noise-making circuits, live, from scratch in front of the audience, often on top of an old overhead projector to render transparent the meaning of their physical gestures. They have performed in Germany, Japan, Italy (Screen Music 2), Norway (Piksel), England (Evolution), Iceland (Pikslaverk), Sweden and the USA (including at the NIME, Bent and Blip festivals).
Perich attended the first Bang on a Can Summer Institute in 2002, where his music was performed in the galleries at Mass MoCA. He was artist in residence at Issue Project Room during Fall, 2008. He has spoken about his work multiple times, including at two Dorkbot meetings.
As a visual artist, Perich creates pen-on-paper drawings made by machine. Like 1-Bit Music, these machine drawings, described as “elegantly delicate” by BOMB Magazine, unite the electronic with the physical, expressing digital process in traditional media. Order and randomness are brought to life within Perich’s compositional frameworks, and delicately executed by the minimal drawing machine, built by the artist. The machine drawings were showcased in the 2005 book “Makers,” and have been shown in group shows at the Dactyl Foundation, ABC No Rio, the Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination, and Greylock Arts. His other visual projects, such as 1-Bit Video, continue to push his concepts in new directions.
Perich studied math, music and computer science at Columbia University after attending Philips Academy, Andover. More recently, he studied art, music and electronics at Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.
