About
The Rural Noise Ensemble is a collective of Vermont based artists, musicians and makers that employ the aesthetics of noise as a critical framework for interrogating rurality. Rooted in its conviction that the rural landscape is not defined by its relationship to nature or history but exists as a dynamic contemporary periphery. The group uses scrap wood and rusty nails, interactive electronics, amateur performers and whatever else is present to make sound; to decode and disrupt a dialogue of this thing called the rural.
Biographies
Sean Clute is an interdisciplinary artist, composer and performer. Clute’s creations embrace hybridization of media and interactivity to explore forms of interdisciplinary expression. His work can be experienced as exhibitions, performances, screenings and events that often blend absurdity with logic.
Clute’s work has been presented internationally at venues such as The Kitchen, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, ISEA2014 – Dubai, Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and the Autonomous Mutant Festival. Awards, residencies, and recognition include the Fulbright Award, Meet the Composer’s Creative Connections Grant, Frog Peak Collective Experimental Music Award, Djerassi Artist-In-Residency, and MuseumsQuartier Wien Artist in Residency, Austria.
Clute lives in Vermont where he is Associate Professor of Media Art at Northern Vermont University. Occasionally, he attempts to cross-country ski.
Otto Muller is a composer, educator, and interdisciplinary artist interested in the dynamics of complicity. His work explores the historical, somatic, spatial and sonic vocabularies used to represent grief, violence, innocence, and loss through participatory engagement, hybrid poetics, and fragile chamber music.
Muller received his PhD in Composition as a Presidential Fellow at the University at Buffalo where he studied with David Felder and has also studied with Amnon Wolman, Amy Williams, Chaya Czernowin, and Steven Takasugi. His chamber works have been performed at festivals including Tzlil Meudcan (Israel), Zvuk I Vryska (Bulgaria), June in Buffalo Festival (USA), and Klangraum (Germany), by ensembles including Duo Stump-Linshalm, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the New York New Music Ensemble, and he Slee Sinfonietta. Muller’s collaborations in theatre, film and visual arts, with artists including Grafted Cede Theatre Co., Theatre Témoin and filmmakers Alan Rhodes, and Vincenzo Mistretta.
Otto Muller leads the Socially Engaged Art BFA program at Goddard College in Vermont, where his research interests include cross-cultural aesthetics and critical arts pedagogy.