Dafna Naphtali and Hans Tammen have been collaborating and performing together since 1998, in many different ensembles and projects. Their duo, Dangertown probes and playfully undermines the elements of their technical and aesthetic practices, using a variety of noise makers, oscillators and other machines – all along the way paying homage (in a twirl of the radio dial) to ambient music, electroacoustic music, free jazz and improvised music, as well as all manner of non-Western musics. See also “Mechaniques” for Tammen/Naphtali duo work prior to 2023.
Dangertown is an historic nickname (circa 1900) for Brooklyn’s once rough and tumble Greenpoint neighborhood (where the current day Dangertown duo is based).
In the video below Dangertown played their first set for the memorial for Michael Evans, percussionist and electronic musician, and a dear friend (who passed away in 2021.) Dangertown uses Michael’s custom electronic instruments: the Ballerina, the Radio and a Therevox (also adding a STEIM Cracklebox). Video originally presented and live streamed by Roulette Intermedium on Jan 28, 2023.
Audio Chandelier: polyélaios is a new multi-channel interactive sound installation by Dafna Naphtali, featuring a kinetic audio speaker sculpture created in collaboration with her sister, metalsmith/designer Ayala Naphtali. The installation, to be installed at Governors Island May 1-July 30th, presented by Harvestworks Digital Media Arts, is postponed due to COVID-19, now projected to open August 1, 2020.
Individual “grains” of sound will be dispersed via the speaker sculpture in an immersive sonic experience– undulating audio “pixels” illuminate and refract moments in time, eliciting reminiscent soundscapes of environmental / electronic fields of crickets, unruly flowing brooks, rain-rhythms, bird song and unruly percussion. A multitude of isolated sounds form a new sonic whole, ranging from turbulence to stillness and Xenakis inspired hyper-electronics refraction of sound.
Dafna Naphtali’s Audio Chandelier multi-channel sound projects since 2010, have included both live performances and fixed media installations. This new interactive installation, created during a 2019 artist residency at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts, is also a first-time collaboration with the metalsmith/designer Ayala Naphtali to create the sculpture.
Ayala Naphtali will contribute expertise from her design practice over the past 35+ years works in ways with color and subtle kinetic and mechanical movement that fits the scale and delicacy of the visual needed for my Audio Chandelier. The design vision for the speaker layout and kinetic sculpture are inspired by Ayala’s silversmith and metal work designs.(ayalajewelry.com)
Dafna and Ayala Naphtali, in this Audio Chandelier: polyélaios , bring together all their influences and background as native New Yorkers and sisters: Dafna, informed by her practice as an electronic musician with a life-long habit of listening to birds rural and urban soundscapes, going back to their family’s extreme backpacking trips, Ayala in her long interest in natural materials and physicality of her objects, starting as a teen taking jewelry classes at the Metropolitan Museum. Their shared history, as native New York sisters also comes in: weekly childhood visits and classes at MoMA (early memories of Calder, Cubism, modern jazz dance classes and early exposure to computer music by their modern dancer mother and engineer/computer programmer, father.
For more background on earlier Audio Chandelier work by Dafna Naphtali, see AudioChandelier.com
DAFNA NAPHTALIis a sound-artist, vocalist, electronic musician and guitarist. A performer and composer of experimental, contemporary classical and improvised music since the mid-90’s, she creates custom Max/MSP programming for sound-processing of voice and other instruments, music for robots, “Audio Chandelier” multi-channel sound projects and “Walkie Talkie Dreams” audio augmented reality soundwalks in NY and Germany. “luminary” (Time Out) “extraordinary experimental vocalist” (Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery. “Brilliant and dangerous” All Music Guide. dafna.info
Ayala Naphtali strives for balance and proportion, and feels as if each piece must find its axis on the wearer. The work is designed to be elegant, with minimal and bold forms Ayala’s work is an exploration of form and materials, each equally important. She feels firmly rooted in the historical tradition of her craft. Ayala is committed to the use of materials, for their color texture and versatility. Often the material is the inspiration for the piece of jewelry being designed. Coconut shell, dyed and carved, is used to achieve rich color and texture. Forging, fabricating and casting are used to create pieces with dimension and volume.”
Ayala began making jewelry in her early teens. She studied Gold and Silversmithing at FIT and SUNY NEW PALTZ where she received her BFA in 1985. Ayala’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally in galleries and museums. She has won awards at Exhibitions nationally. Her work has been collected privately, and by major museums including the Cooper Hewitt and Kunsindustriumuseum in Norway, and The White House permanent collection. Ayala currently exhibits in major nationally juries craft shows such as American Craft Exposition in Baltimore, SOFA show in Chicago and other local venues. Selected publications include American Craft Magazine, ELLE, The Fashions of The Times, The New York Times, Mademoiselle, Women’s Wear Daily, Glamour, and New Women Magazine. Ayala has been a juror for The American Craft Council Craft Shows.
Pulsing Dot, is the debut release by the duo of Gordon Beeferman (piano) and Dafna Naphtali (voice, electronics) on Clang label (Denmark) September 2017, with cover art by Julia Stoops.
In settings and improvisations for piano and voice, with kinetic sound processing, fractal rhythms, and generating polyphonic / kaleidophonic disturbances, Gordon Beeferman fleshes out protean fragments into strikingly visceral structures and landscapes that take the piano to its limit, and Dafna Naphtali augments her high energy live processing of Beeferman’s piano with extended vocal techniques/sounds/multi-modal singing and her custom take on hand and voice-activated electronics. Pulsing Dot press release.
“An extraordinary and stunning release…extended and multidimensional..almost of orchestral and theatrical proportions to use an inadequate comparison. The music really breathes and is full of energy, not losing itself in meaningless experimentalism and stays focused and very together.” (Vital Weekly)
Gordon Beeferman & Dafna Naphtali – SOUP & SOUND 09-09-17
“live interaction between the collaborators makes for some truly groundbreaking improvisation” (Peter Thelen, Exposé
“The well-thought-out evolution…slowly unfolds into something more like a sonic daylight.” (Chain D.L.K.)
“Naphtali & Beeferman have hit the nail on the head with this release.. a feedback loop of seamless interaction” (Sigil of Brass)
“quirky & playful”, “unpredictable, yet constantly active track that balances scuttling tension with slurred alien tribal-ness.” (Musique Machine)
watch the video: Dafna Naphtali / Gordon Beeferman live at The Firehouse, Brooklyn, NY, January 2015 https://vimeo.com/149483714
@ SOUP & SOUND 09-09-17 (Scott Friedlander)
Gordon Beeferman & Dafna Naphtali – SOUP & SOUND 09-09-1
Clip Mouth Unit– Jen Baker (trombone/voice) and Dafna Naphtali (voice/live-sound-processing/electronics)– has created a unique set of open form compositions for their multi-faceted performance concept — merging electro-acoustics, multi-phonics, and extended techniques, integrated directly with scalar and rhythmic concepts.
Dafna Naphtali / Jen Baker at NYC Electroacoustic Improv Summit 2016
The duo has been performing and creating together since 2011, including presentations at ISIM (Int’l Society of Improvising Musicians Conference), Bucknell College, and NYC Electroacoustic Improvisation Summit, and preparing a unique set of open form compositions for their multi-faceted performance concept merging electro-acoustics, multi-phonics, extended techniques, integrated directly with scalar and rhythmic concepts.
“Clip Mouth Unit, a duo project of Dafna Naphtali and Jen Baker performed with a high-energy mix of Baker’s trombone interjections and Naphtali’s intense yet urbane vocal stylings, combined with varied and unpredictable computer- generated textures and live processing of the acoustic sound, all presented with a comic’s madcap sense of timing. Despite a wide range of surprising musical swerves, the performance never lost focus.”
BIOs of Jen / Dafna: Jen Baker, trombonist/composer, has collaborated with artists all over the world in site-specific mixed media performance, concert halls, solo and chamber commissions. As an improviser she is featured on the soundtrack to Werner Herzog’s Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World. She has performed internationally in festivals and has toured with Arijit Singh, Karole Armitage, and Mansour, and new music ensembles S.E.M., TILT brass, and the mobile ensemble Asphalt Orchestra (founding member). Her well received new book, Hooked on Multiphonics, is treatise on extended techniques for trombone for composers and trombonists to aid in understanding and executing the deep complexities of multiphonics.
Clip Mouth Unit scores are in the form of a deck of cards/PostIts each with a different behavior or electroacoustic process outlining relationship between instruments and processing ======>
score for June 2015 gig at TransPecos
Below are the last moments of our performance at TransPecos — (the video is dark,but the sound is good.) See below for more videos and the rest of the concert.
PastConcerts/Activities:
— Live on WKCR radio NY, with Nicola Hein (guitar) and Ramin Amir Arjomand (piano) (April 2018)
— Penn State University School of Music (Feb 2018)
— Bucknell College (Sept 2017),
— New York University Society for Women in Technology (SWiTCH) concerts (’17, ’15) see videos
— TransPecos – June 2015
— Panoply– duo performance 2013
— Firehouse Space– trio with Ras Moshe (saxophone)
— ISIM 2014 (Int’l Society of Improvising Musicians) presentation/performance
— presentation on Clip Mouth Unit on WTF is Experimental Music Series, Panoply Lab
— recording @ Harvestworks (unreleased) — duos plus one: with Ras Moshe, with Andrew Drury, with Sarah Bernstein.
“Index of Refraction” is the debut album of the duo of Luis Tabuenca (percussion/ drums), Dafna Naphtali (voice/ electronics), recorded at Harvestworks in NY. An Index of Refraction of a material is a dimensionless number that describes how light propagates through that medium. Inspired by this definition, and translated/transposed to musical vocabulary– an index of refraction could be an analogy to the way in which acoustical instruments and the human voice behave when they are sound processed through electronic devices.
Tabuenca and Naphtali first met and performed together October 2013, when Tabuenca invited Naphtali to Festival Audio Tangente in Burgos, Spain, which he curated with the theme of voice and electronics. The duo’s communicative and energetic performance at the festival was the beginning of a long term project, continuing in NY, and in a new recording — “Index of Refraction” was released in April on Acheulian Handaxe as CD or digital download (also iTunes). The album is also available on naucleshg and Bandcamp: https://handaxe.bandcamp.com/album/index-of-refraction
“secret codes of impromptu action.. elegance behind the expressiveness..Naphtali’s non-figurative melodic diversions, glimpses of a cross of Tenko Ueno and a slightly inebriated Meredith Monk.. “ Massimo Ricci / Touching Extremes.
at work in NY:
After the duo’s initial performance in Spain, Luis Tabuenca came to NY in Spring of 2014 for a residency at NYU’s Waverly labs. He and Naphtali performed shows around NY — as a duo, and with other collaborators — trio with Izzi Ramkisssoon (bass), and a quintet at The Firehouse Space with Briggan Krauss (sax), Stephanie Griffin (viola) and Jonas Tauber (bass). Their work together in NY culminated in the first album of this duo.
..about Index of Refraction: This new duo release “Index of Refraction” was recorded at Harvestworks in NY. An Index of Refraction of a material is a dimensionless number that describes how light propagates through that medium. Inspired by this definition, and translated/transposed to musical vocabulary– an index of refraction could be an analogy to the way in which acoustical instruments and the human voice behave when they are sound processed through electronic devices.
This concept in mind, we improvised music while processing and manipulating our sounds, both electronically and acoustically, in order to create new sonic landscapes, each track is based on the refractive index of a different medium.
Tabuenca-Naphtali duo is available for bookings in Europe
March 11-28th 2017.
Augmented Audio soundwalk in Washington Square Park, NYC powered by U-GRUVE AR.
Walkie Talkie Dream Angles isan electroacoustic composition and interactive sound walk for Washington Square Park by Dafna Naphtali — traversing sonically interesting corners of the park to underscore the loss of quiet, past and future sounds, bringing a favorite urban environment to life, in a sonically unique and individual way. Processed pre-recorded environmental sounds are layered with voice, and some thoughtful strategizing about site-specific listening, interactivity and attention span.
LAUNCHED 2016, available 24/7 (or whenever the park is open) indefinitely! UPDATE: 4-28-21 temporarily under maintenance..
1) DOWNLOAD the free Walkie Talkie Dream Angles app
(recommended to do on WiFi)
Walkie Talkie Dream Angles was created for U-GRUVE AR, a mobile device app and Audio Augmented Reality platform created by creative technologist Richard Rodkin of Memetic Arts, which enables the creation of interactive soundtracks for public spaces using listener/participants phones and GPS sensors to trigger geo-tagged musical outcomes to predefined zones in the targeted environment.
Notes: Giving a talk about my work Walkie Talkie Dream Angles at the Monthly Music Hackathon.
The Noise Hackathon centers on the notion of “Noise in 3D: Data-Driven, Art-Driven & Community-Driven” while embracing both the vastness and idiosyncrasies of the world of noise. Talks, panels, and workshops will provide gateways into the complexities of noise including urban noise pollution and noise music to jump-start a full day of noise hacking. Please join us in making some noise
Schedule
11:30 AM – Doors open
12:00 PM – Talks
Arline Bronzaft – Less Noise Translates Into a Healthier Lifestyle
Tae Hong Park – Soundmapping Our World: Measuring, Seeing, Doing
Dafna Naphtali – Interactive Site-specific Composition: U-GRUVE Audio Augmented Reality
Nikita Scott – Healthy Oceans: The True Cost of Underwater Noise
1:30 PM – Hacking and optional brainstorming session start
2:00 PM – Workshop
Using the Citygram system and Supercollider to interact with and display NYC noise pollution data
CHATTER BLIP is a duo project of Chuck Bettis (electronics/throat) and Dafna Naphtali (electronics/processing/voice) — an interstellar multi-character audio operetta involving a multitude of human, alien, and machine voices, in a mash-up of primal and classic sci-fi and electro-acoustics….. with performances since 2006.
RELEASED March 2020– Microcosmopolitan — on Contour Editions, iTunes and Bandcampfeatures seven brand new tracks, and two reaction poems inspired by the tracks from Shelley Hirsch. Bettis and Naphtali also created a series of audio reactive / generative music videos for the tracks on Microcosmopolitan, featuring footage from their lockdown time in NYC collaborating together remotely. Created for presentation on Harvestworks Twitch TV 9/22/20
Audio/Video of other past performances:
–WhiteNoise IV – July 9, 2021 (First show since the pandemic!) (part of Brooklyn Sounds: An Out of the Box Project from WhiteBox_) Curated by Juan Puntes with Katherine Liberovskaya
Chatter Blip’s debut CD was “Chatter Blip” ((Acheulian Handaxe 2013)
Bios: Chuck Bettis, (electronics + throat) was raised in the fertile HarDCore soil, nourished within Baltimore’s enigmatic avant garde gatherings, and blossoming in NY’s Downtown Musical tribe. His unique blend of electronics and throat has led him into various collaborations with great musicians from around the globe. He has performed live with John Zorn, Fred Frith, Jamie Saft, and Afrirampo to name a few. Some of the musicians Bettis has recorded and played live with are as follows; Ikue Mori, Nautical Almanac, Audrey Chen, Yellow Swans, Toshio Kajiwara, Mick Barr, etc, plus a long history of punk bands he was in (most notably the experimental punk band Meta-matics as well as the enigmatic All Scars). Currently he is working on many of his experimental projects such as Snake Union with Dave Grant, Die Trommel Fatale with Brandon Seabrook/Marika Hughes/Eivind Opsvik/Henry Fraser/Dave Truet/Sam Ospovat, Mossenek with Mick Barr & Colin Marston, Chatter Blip with Dafna Naphtali, and Pretty Clicks with Berangere Maximin, in addition to improvising, recording, or composing with an array of musicians from around the world. http://chuckbettis.com/
Dafna Naphtali (voice – electronics – live-sound-processing) composes and performs experimental, interactive electro-acoustic music using her custom Max/MSP programming for live sound processing of voice and other instruments, and works for multi-channel audio and musical robots. She draws on her musical background in jazz, classical, rock and near-eastern music, and interprets Cage, Stockhausen and contemporary composers, in projects with well-regarded musicians around the world, and grants/fellowships/residencies. CD “What is it Like to be a Bat?” digital punk trio w/Kitty Brazelton (Tzadik), and several CDs forthcoming in 2017.
Live Sound Processing Strategies: A free workshop and concert at Harvestworks was on May 12th, 2012
Joining Dafna were masters in their craft: Robert Dick (flutes) and Satoshi Takeishi (percussion):
This evening was created to explore and discuss various live sound processing strategies through performance, lecture and presentation, and will gave participants a foundation for developing their own work. The lecture/presentation was taught by Dafna Naphtali, who uses live sound processing in her work since 1995, and will began with a performance by a trio that included Robert Dick (flutes) and Satoshi Takeishi (percussion). more information..
Related show
Artist: Dafna Naphtali with Robert Dick and Satoshi Takeishi
Notes: Live Sound Processing Strategies
Dafna Naphtali with Robert Dick & Satoshi Takeishi
Saturday, May 12, 7pm
Subway: F/M/D/B Broadway/Lafayette, R Prince, 6 Bleeker
“Live Sound Processing” is used to alter and affect the sounds of other instruments in performance, which in turn becomes its own unique voice in the musical process. Addressing the electroacoustic environment of the performance space allows for a site-specific version of the piece through a complex sampling and spatialization process. While the difference between live sound processing and other electronic music practices has perplexed the audiences in the past, these days the role of the live sound processor is much more understood. With faster laptops and more widespread use and availability of classic live sound processing as plugins, these techniques have gradually become more acceptable, and in some music genres practically expected. Both performers and audiences have become more savvy about the techniques and sounds.
Dafna created the audio score for Quarry (her second score for a Lenore Malen video). Quarry was shown at Lesley Heller Workspace February 1 – March 4, 2012.
Quarry 2001-15 “What if objects like rock refuse the stillness of being rendered and the on human world makes its own impress, exerts its own force.” JJ Cohen Filmed in summer 2001 and edited immediately after 9/11
Directed by Lenore Malen
Cameras: Jordan Wolfson, Ilana Rein Editors: David Bee, Ruppert Bohle, Lenore Malen Sound: Dafna Naphtali Choreography: Renee Rockoff
Quarry was filmed in upstate New York in June 200l, edited in September 2001 and with a final edit in 2012. It was the very first project of The New Society for Universal Harmony.
The most recent screening was at Lesley Heller Gallery Feb. 1— March 4th 2012 in a show that I curated titled The Herd Remorse.
