Invasion Of The Monkey Mind

Hollow Conversations

Metal Orchestra Remix

In December of 2012, at the request of my wife, Megan, I joined forces with Ingeborg Iping-Petterson, Meghan Handyside and my mother in law, Becca Switzer, to concoct a cake so powerful it left all who ate it in tears. The five of us hunted recipes, debated flavor profiles, and brainstormed Machiavellian combinations of fat, salt, and sugar. How much butter could one possibly cram into a cake? With a whiff of a plan, we dove headfirst into our honey, yogurt, Swiss-meringue, lemon curd, bourbon, buttercream Franken-cake. Beating, blending, cutting, cooking, tempering, and drinking abounded. For four glorious hours, the five of us were aproned blurs, thrashing in wild, unpredictable directions—occasionally coalescing to assemble, frost, and taste.

Our coterie became a quintet of virtuosic musicians, mixing and whipping up delicious, improvisatory counterpoint. The cramped kitchen thrummed and swirled as we fought to nourish the monstrous cake. We fed from our mistakes—sweating under the narration of a thousand YouTubes, which clued us in on the most effective creaming techniques, better strategies to soak up bourbon, and the only real way to sift flour. The speakers shouted instructions in saccharine synchronicity, and we disobeyed. The cake soon consumed our stockpiles of fat and sugar, and we found ourselves buying more and more and more to sate its hunger. The quintet crescendoed.

Water fell—salty from faces, drippy from faucets, condensation from the kitchen window in the Georgia sun. The water and bakers blended together in sweet, wet entropy. And with one final zest of a lemon, the frenzy was over. The cake sat, cooling and intensifying. At suppertime it made the three-mile pilgrimage to bask in the glory and adoration of thirty-two drooling party-goers. And at this end of our journey, the cake of a thousand waterfalls was served alongside ham, parsnip, rattlesnake, and flaming pudding. Though all were appetizing, no other dish could compare to the majesty, scope, and audacity of our buttercream beast. We giggled at its moment of consummation. We wondered if the table would bear its weight. We cried, softly as we ate its lemony heart. We went back for seconds and thirds. Finally, we pushed back from the table—bloated, lethargic, enervated—and knew that our cake had tapped into something magical, something human, something delicious.

The Cake Of 1000 Waterfalls

Selections from r!p.off/r!p.•n, featuring collaborators Hunter Ewen, Michael Theodore, Matt Bethancourt, Monica Bolles, Jiffer Hariman, JP Merz, Eric Mulhern, Abhishek Narula, Kevin Olson, Willie Payne, and Jim Simmons.

r!p.off/r!p.•n - installation and performance led by Trimpin

Hunter Ewen and the Boulder Image and Sound Network play "Homme Ohm Om". BISoN iPad ensemble (Boulder Image and Sound Network): a 5–6 person ensemble that uses iPads as performance instruments. BISoN's work combines music (sound art) with sound design, photography, filmmaking, dance (movement art), poetry/prose, computer programming, and user design—all being controlled by iPads instead of traditional musical instruments—with students involved in every step, under the leadership of CU Instructor of Critical Media Practices Hunter Ewen.

Because of the diversity and expertise of the ensemble—BISoN is an educational ensemble as well as a performance ensemble. We learn to speak about our craft. To develop meaningful conclusions about the world around us and to articulate those verbally in front of audiences. A critical part of our approach is combining live performances with Q&As, instrument demonstrations, and to allow audiences to play with the technology. And because all of our equipment fits in a backpack, setup is generally lightweight and quick.

We are currently developing a new multimedia work on the nature of the iPad ensemble, the push for a multidisciplinary approach to education, and the rebirth of the transmedia artist. We're planning to premiere this work June 2 as part of a commission from the Colorado State Music Teacher's Association.

Homme Ohm Om

That feeling when everything is on fire and the endless radio adds bore holes in your brain. Venom, Consumption, Saturation is my reaction to the political/media onslaught: 36,000 musical phrases, all screaming for attention, directed by big data and routed through servers in Russia.

Venom, Consumption, Saturation

Hurry And Be Still

One of the more entertaining and educational activities when I visit my in-laws is hearing stories of my wife as a kid. A child who would run, at full sprint, around her childhood home, singing Dixie with abandon. A girl who burst into tears at the age of three when she learned that the South had lost the war. A kid for whom the term unsweetened tea was an oxymoron. Someone whose unstoppable energy and remarkable perseverance makes me wish I had known her growing up. I’ve been with my wife for ten years; she still sings Dixie with abandon.  Visit www.hunterewen.com for more information.

Hunter Ewen

Popular tracks