Jorge Boehringer

Jorge Boehringer (b.1975 New York, NY) is a composer and artist who lives in Prague, Czech Republic. He is a composer of electronic and acoustic music, and multimedia/interactive media situations. His work has been presented internationally in a variety of contexts, from concert hall performances to underground noise shows, as part of theatre and dance performances, and within museum and gallery contexts as installations of interactive sound and audio/visual environments. Boehringer holds degrees from several institutions, including a master’s degree from Mills College where he had to opportunity study with Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, and attend workshops with Marianne Amacher, Paul Demarinis, Gordon Mumma, and Allan Kaprow. Boehringer’s work, however, involves a variety of materials and techniques to accompany them. Some of these materials are as immaterial as light or wind, some materials, like plants or sandstones, are involved in their own processes of growth or entropy. Boehringer is fond of saying that he”works in whatever medium presents itself.” One could add that he takes “presence itself” and the experience of this, as a goal. Boehringer’s critically acclaimed solo project, Core of the Coalman(US/CZ), is at once an open sketchbook, and a collection of compositions perpetually in a state of evolution. Core of the Coalman can be characterized as continuity and discontinuity for viola, voice, and circuits on the border between order and chaos. Sonically diverse and at times explosive in texture, Core of the Coalman emphasizes the physicality of sound in its synesthetic relationships between ear, mind, and environment, with the aim of hearing oneself hearing. Performances normally include conventional instruments such as viola and harmonica, as well as feedback-driven yodel triggers,descending tympanic pressures implying sexual interface, and extended upwardly-mobile Carnasitic arrays, with ornaments. Core of the Coalman has been featured on all kinds of concert programs from power electronics and noise performances to small gallery events and several major art festival performances such as Impakt Festival (presented by Kraak) and Colour Out of Space (presented by Chocolate Monk). Boehringer and his solo project accidently moved from Oakland, California to Prague and since then he has released several recordings, including: Aggregate and Crackle (Chocolate Monk, UK), Symmetrical Cavepeople (Insect, CZ), You’ll Need A Catapult (KlangundKrach, CZ), Box of the Last Help (Zum, US), Affinity Groups (self), Precambrian Figures (Unverified, UK) and numerous tapes and other custom made, experimental structures for presenting audio-visual material. He teaches sound, experimental and interactive media, and runs a visual art studio at Prague College, where he also moderates the Experimental Arts Reseach Lab (EARL) a clearinghouse for crazy people with soldering irons and noisy ideas.