"Normal Moments in a Weird Dream"
Noah Prebish '16, music major and recipient of a Treuhaft Fund for Art Technology project grant, has big plans for his senior capstone project. On Wednesday, April 27 Prebish will present Normal Moments in a Weird Dream, a performance that includes mixed-media art forms, experimental sounds, and classical music compositions in an ephemeral, sensory experience. The performance will take place at 9 p.m. in the Dance Center. Admission is free.
Noah Prebish '16 (Photo by Simon Klein ’17)
Prebish has been planning this project since last year. It will span two disciplines—music
and art—and will involve a great deal of faculty support. "Skidmore makes a lot of
really incredible resources available and more than that, there are a lot of faculty
members that are like family members at this point," he says.
The project is overseen and advised by Anthony Holland, associate professor of music;
Carl Landa, music director of the Dance Department; and Nicky Tavares, digital and
visual media Mellon Fellow. The performance will also highlight Prebish's talented
peers. With approximately 20 players in his ensemble, this is "the biggest thing I've
ever undertaken," he says.
This semester Prebish is taking "Contemporary Time-Based Media," a multimedia course
taught by Tavares, which will help him prepare for a visually rich performance. He
is learning how to use visual programming software and hopes to devise a system that
triggers sounds and visuals at the same time.
"The goal over the course of the evening is essentially to blur the line between abstract
and representative media, at times even reversing their roles, through a blend of
psychedelic and classical musical and visual ideas," he says.
Prebish, whose primary instrument is guitar, discovered his passion for classical
music two years ago in his music courses. Normal Movements in a Weird Dream is the "sound of someone who grew up playing punk, rock, and non-western music, suddenly
falling in love with classical music."
Prebish is in a band, Psymon Spine, along with three other Skidmore students. They
are signed to the NYC-based Axis Mundi Records. ~Lisa Fierstein '16
