Jen Kutler

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recent Press

“Kutler’s music is subdued and perilous, bolstered by fragments of prepared piano and vocals. The project’s search for empathy is a captivating story and the music doesn’t feel heavy-handed. Each piece finds steady, subtle drones and icy melodic fragments, hanging in a constant stream of delicate tension.” - Vanessa Ague, The Wire (Issue 445) (Sonified Physiological Indicators of Empathy, 2021)

““borders” wears its heart on its sleeve; reading the title, it’s impossible not to think of Trump’s wall and the Muslim ban (now halted), or Brexit (still unfolding), but the images and sounds are fluid. The eyes see porous, morphing patterns of liquid; the ears hear waves, implying both border and endless sea.” - Richard Allen, A Closer Listen (Sonified Physiological Indicators of Empathy, 2021)

“If ever a recording benefited from playback via headphones or an immersive surround-sound environment, Kutler's definitely qualifies. The settings are ultra-dense soundscapes within which blurry textures abound and unearthly vocals and instrument timbres drift. In the opening “Feasible,” cavernous rumblings emerge alongside steely, organ-like tones, the latter perhaps the result of stretched-out piano voicings and the whole somehow managing to suggest ties to both dark ambient at its most macabre and Baroque music.” - Ron Schepper, Textura (Sonified Physiological Indicators of Empathy, 2021)

“The pieces using voices as the source can be twisted and haunting. But for the most part, Kutler’s processed audio does not directly represent the jarring feelings of anxiety and fear that the subjects no doubt experienced. Instead, she has transformed them into an otherworldly combination of beauty and dread.” - Mike Borella, Avant Music News (Sonified Physiological Indicators of Empathy, 2021)

“It is an exquisitely fraught listen. Allure and unease press into each other. Flocks of pizzicato burst from gentle feedback tones; the quivers of audio time-stretching protrude like goosebumps upon arcs of melody; a choir of children wobbles between harmonic parallel and pulsing misalignment.” - Jack Chuter, Attn Magazine (Sonified Physiological Indicators of Empathy, 2021)

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Releases & broadcasts

work

Das Elektrische Hertz Porträt

Composition for networked laptop, electromagnetic pickup, fetal heart monitor and EEG sensor - written for the Toneburst Laptop and Electronic Arts Ensemble and inspired by the book by Franz A. N. Kienle. Premiered in March 2025 at Wesleyan University’s Ring Performing Arts Hall.

Chatter Marks

Chatter Marks is a composition for chamber ensemble commissioned by Switch~ Ensemble is an investigation into the relationship between the breakdown of an individual and the crumbling of social, political and economic foundations of the United States. The score asks performers personal questions about their upbringing and lives while sewing machines turned monophonic mechanical synthesizers are employed to follow the pitch of one performer at a time, mimicking the musicians’ emotive playing and ultimately falling short. The musicians attempt to hide, change or break the sewing machines any way that they can, like prey evading a predator. The piece concludes with a section using curstom ferromagnetic vibraphone bars and an electromagnetic exciter unless all notes ring out unless they are held down. As the bars are gradually muted, the performers must steal tones from each other until there is nothing left.

Premiered November 2022 Performed by Switch~ Ensemble - Laura Cocks (Flute), Madison Greenstone (Clarinet), Megan Arns (Percussion), Lauren Cauley (Violin), T.J. Borden (Cello), Jason Thorpe Buchanan (Electronics) and Chris Chandler (Sound) - at PS21 Chatham, NY

Chatter Marks is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and The Amphion Foundation.

Measures

MEASURES is a flexible web based sound art ecosystem which focuses on AI as a tool to witness people in the most human way possible – through experiencing a person feeling empathy. MEASURES offers a new way to feel connected and to experience one another across borders, cultures, socioeconomic classes and other zones of isolation.

Users wear an electronic wristband which provides audio cues and measures the participant's electrodermal activity. The data is transferred over WIFI to a server which compares the data to a set of “points of excitation” and generates a unique sound work.

Each sound work is subsequently analyzed for its own “points of excitation.” The results are used as the basis of the next user's auditory stimuli and physiological data comparison to generate the next sound piece and so on. The sound works are added to a freely accessible public online archive.

The form of MEASURES is unique as the hand worn data collection device exists as an electronic art object and generates a potentially infinite archive of sound works, and is designed to be accessible as a tool for installation, real-time performance and solitary use. .

To my knowledge, MEASURES is the first system in the artistic and scientific communities designed with the specific purpose of measuring empathy. MEASURES content originates from an infinitely expansive pool of participant data that is comprised of empathetic responses. MEASURES takes the form of the data collection device as an electronic art object, generates an expansive biodata-driven archive of individual sound works and is a system designed for performance and solitary use.

In progress, 2026

Measures is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and Wave Farm.

Cathode Ray Gunpoint

Cathode Ray Gun Point is an audio-visual performance piece in which Kutler relates stories by the light of a single match while wearing a lie detection circuit which controls the audio and visual environment. Video of Kutler reciting the text is manipulated by an RGB raster manipulation unit or "wobbulator" made from a vintage cathode ray tube projector and hand wound coils. The "wobbulator" is controlled by the lie detector's signals. The stories told are accompanied by audio generated from the lie detector's signals which return to the air via speakers to manipulate the match's flame.

Images are from Transient Vision Festival, Spool Mfg. 2021, by Deanna Kaparo.

unheard extended

Unheard Extended is a series of infrasonic compositions based on traditional harmony octaves lower to resonate the body instead of the usual hearing mechanisms in the ears. The body is extremely sensitive to intonation and dissonances as a result of tuning, therefore a natural Pythagorean temperament is used in these pieces. The works explore the spectrum of consonance and dissonance as a bodily feeling which evokes comfort, contentment, fear and uneasiness as experiences of melody and harmony take on new, and somehow familiar meanings.

Wave Farmacy

Wave Farmacy is a radio talk show and series of sound pieces presented by WGXC 90.7FM Acra, NY and hosted by Jen Kutler and Tim Light. The show invites guests engineers and mental health professionals at the tops of their respective fields to attempt to solve listeners’ issues with their skill sets. Engineers on the show use engineering, physical and mathematical principles to solve emotional, relationship and mental health issues while mental health professionals use counseling, behavioral and mental health tools to solve technical problems. The show is aired on the fourth Tuesday of every month at 2pm EST on 90.7FM Acra, NY and online at wgxc.org. Show archives can be heard at soundcloud.com/wavefarmacy.

Southern Comfort

Southern Comfort is a radio sound piece by Jen Kutler featuring text and performance by Quintan Ana Wikswo. The title Southern Comfort surrounds the queer US/Mexico border experience in its complexity of solidarity and joy in the face of bigotry, violence, hate crimes and the AIDS crisis. Kutler and Wikswo's works invoke a rich, evolving and intergenerational legacy of obscured drag, ballroom, trans, mixed-race and gender queer fissures of deep southern and southwest American Culture through which the whiskey culture forms a through line of recreation and transgression. These rituals transcend the simple imbibing of alcohol.

The sounds are synthetic voices generated from physiological sensor devices worn on Kutler's body to document her response to the emotive narrative. These voices draw from granular synthesis, sine waves, cassette tape loops and stringed instruments.

December, 2020

Sonified Physiological Indicators of Empathy

Sonified Physiological Indicators of Empathy video pieces for Borders, Long and Short Term Memory Loss:

in loving memory of being touched

In Loving Memory of Being Touched is a series of touch simulation pieces written for direct electrical nerve stimulation - the closest thing to touch available in quarantine during The 2020 Novel Coronavirus Pandemic. Using components removed from a hospital communications system, the parts have been repurposed and assembled into handmade devices that simulate the sensation of touch using electrical pulses. The pieces are composed on an electronic keyboard to mimic the consonance and dissonance of musical passages to create a sort of song to be felt physically.

noise date

Collaboration with Tim Light

Noise Date is a social media platform for members of the noise community, apocalyptic personalities and those with no social skills. Designed to be as impenetrable as its users. Meant to be taken extremely seriously. Sign up at noisedate.com. January, 2020.

Presence

Collaboration with Erin Gee

Presence is a telematic sound performance for two bodies, inspired by isolation and a need for human connection met with networked, electronically simulated touch. Through transcutaneous nerve stimulation and custom biosensors that track the autonomic nervous system, Gee and Kutler embrace the unconscious and autonomous nature of “feeling.” Data is collected from Gee and Kutler (cardiac, respiratory and skin conductance) to instrumentalize their inner worlds at a distance. This data is used to activate sine tones, granular synthesis and electronic touch in a real-time, networked, feedback loop. Custom hardware translates the biosignals into transcutaneous electronic pulses. These networked pulses further immerse the artists in each others’ biosignals through an uncanny “touch.” The performance is driven by samples of vocal suggestions performed in the style of ASMR that are triggered by moments of confluence in the biodata. The voice of this work encourages the listener to consider their own relationship to touch and sound during isolation. 

During the performance, endoscopic video footage is taken of each performer in real time, shared through abstracted representations of the ongoing physiological data. Through these visualizations, the artists explore the limits of phenomenological intimacy over networked technologies, privileging the performers’ inner bodily worlds as primary visual content of the piece. All technology used (biosensors, transcutaneous touch simulator, tools for data transmission on puredata) is open source.

hush

disembodied

Indicies A01 Video

This is the video for Nate Scheible’s A01 from his album on Never Anything Records entitled Indicies. 2019

Link & line

generating values

Generating Values is a piece about discrepant experiences of the same surroundings and its relationship to social conduct. Two participants are presented with the same video content simultaneously which includes simple lines, technical specifications, images related to race and gender, geometric patterns, and other visual stimulation. Using hacked EEG sensors, the electrical patterns in the participants brains are measured and translated to MIDI signals. Different types of activity and mental states dictate the values that are produced. The values are then interpreted to generate two channels of audio and manipulate the original video signal. Over the course of the piece, the data stream is smoothed and becomes a standard, alluding to the ethical standards we develop as the interpretation of our surroundings molds our principles.

2017

A live audio-only version of Generating Values recorded at the Wave Farm 20th Anniversary Performance at Fridman Gallery from October, 2017. 

Women’s Work

The Whether

casting

Casting is an interactive sound sculpture that reacts to shadows. The audience is invited to look into their shadow as it is cast on the piece. When engaged, the piece generates an ambient soundscape of manipulated field recordingS and explores discrepancies between auditory documents of memory and memory as it is re-constructed in the mind. Casting utilizes audio of common childhood sound environments and replays it as manipulated samples and granular audio based on the motion, shape and intensity of the shadows cast on it. As the piece is engaged, the user adjusts their body shape and shadow to create sounds that seem pleasing or interesting, rather than listening to the results of their shadow as it originally fell. This mimics the way that we often choose to remember the past differently and experiment with our own sense of the memory.

2018

adsrain 

ADSRain is a mobile sound sculpture composed of an umbrella with added electronics to transduce rain drops into synthetic tones. Participants are invited to wear headphones while walking in the shelter of ADSRain and listen to the various pit pats, drones, buzzes, hums and rhythms produced by the wind and rain striking the umbrella.

Check upcoming for ADSRain group walks around NYC and the Hudson Valley.

2016

penetrating silence

touch compositions & remote touch transmission

In Loving Memory of Being Touched is a series of touch simulation pieces written for direct electrical nerve stimulation - the closest thing to touch available in quarantine during The 2020 Novel Coronavirus Pandemic. Using components removed from a hospital communications system, the parts have been repurposed and assembled into handmade devices that simulate the sensation of touch using electrical pulses. The pieces are composed on an electronic keyboard to mimic the consonance and dissonance of musical passages to create a sort of song to be felt physically.

In collaboration with web developer Daniel van der Meer, a web platform based on WebMIDI is in development to allow users to create their own touch sequences, either with a MIDI enable electronic keyboard instrument or through the browser with a web based sequencer. Users can send their touch sequences to loved ones during quarantine or use the platform to create their own pieces to be shared publicly.

Touch simulation units are available to purchase at jenkutler.bigcartel.com.

If you already have access to a touch simulation unit, you can experience the series of pieces “In Loving Memory of Being Touched” here.

You can access the touch sequence messaging system to transmit your own original touch sequences here.

Experiencing touch compositions and remote transmissions requires a custom MIDI controlled touch simulation device. Have a look at the hardware schematic & code if you’d like to build your own. Have a look at the software webMIDI interfaces by Daniel van der Meer if you’re curious. You can purchase an assembled touch simulation unit here.

Don’t forget to read the manual!