James Rouvelle
Bio
My earliest creative activities often occurred at sunrise and involved two voiced, contrapuntal, atonal improvisations on the piano next to my parents’ bedroom. These early works were met with scathing reviews by my family and downstairs neighbor, and lead to stints at a series of shoddy, city day-camps. I changed instruments and began experiments with my father's guitar. Soon after my sister was given piano lessons and I developed a crush on Sevim, her teacher, and asked if I too could study. I was encouraged to spend more time in the park. I decided to go straight to the source and, with my sister's help, set about notating a piece of music specifically for Sevim. Sevim was impressed but my plan ultimately backfired as I was "rewarded" with Saturday music lessons from some other people at the local conservatory. That didn't last long. I switched my focus to organized sports and general mischief. I began spending a lot of time with my great-uncle, who lived in the country, had a workshop, and enjoyed not only building all sorts of motorized gizmos, but making things fizz, pop, and glow with chemistry.Noting my interest in sound, he gave me a tape recorder on my twelfth birthday. While showing me how the sound ended up on the tape we experimented with altering the sound by treating the tape with various compounds, and so began experiments in what I later learned to call electronic music. From there I became interested in various string instruments, and free-form, group improvisation, that often included "adapted" consumer electronics and "prepared" tapes. Adolescence was upon me, and late one night I saw and heard Alban Berg’s Wozzeck on public TV. Realizing for the first time that "classical" music could express some of the complex emotions I was dealing with I began studying notated music in earnest, primarily on my own. I aspired to be a composer in the tradition of western art music, to express my experience in all its twisted glory. I realize now that I was going through a phase of individuation, and while I continued with group improv, the promise of expressing myself as an individual through sound was powerful. It took a few years but I ultimately went to music school and studied composition. I started a chamber music group and did everything I could to develop my art, but after a few years had to admit to myself that the classical music atmosphere, for me, was toxic. It seemed to me that I had to decide if I wanted to be a contemporary classical composer, or an artist. I chose the latter and moved into the sound installation genre. While there, I re-acquainted myself with basic electronics and became interested in micro-controllers, IC's, networks, and robotics. While sound is often an element of what I work with today, it is no longer my sole medium.
This is where I am now. I consider myself to be an artist and experimenter. I am interested in the development of hypotheses that often reflect my aesthetic concerns, and their investigation through a hybrid practice that includes scientific methodology (logic, statistics, instrument building), discourse and presentation. I exhibit my work in galleries, lecture on my process and inventions, collaborate with others, teach, and continue to learn. I believe that we humans are all, essentially, technological experimentalists. We observe our surroundings, analyze our needs, make things that change our environments, observe, adapt, then make more things, observe, adapt, and so on. The more I work and learn, the less interested I am in being able to clearly categorize the things that I build, or, the things you might build, and the more interested I am in creating and experiencing works that come from a genuine, personal interest, that reveal surprising relationships and systems. Presently I am Professor of Interactive Media at the Maryland Institute. As an instructor, my intention is to provide tools to my students with which they can locate their own sensibilities, create along their own lines, and make their discoveries and intentions available to others. I encourage those I meet to experiment, connect with others, discover patterns, and play seriously.