projects with Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu

Much of my recent collaborative work has been with my wife, writer/artist/filmmaker, Cherlyn Hsing Hsin Pisaro-Liu. This space lists some of our work together across various media.

Material Immaterial (performance)

  • Still from burnt rose.

    A concert/screening with films and music, (Video and celluloid projection, electric guitar, sine tones and field recordings.)

  • Hsing-Hsin with projector.

    The activity and the sound of the projector feature as an integral part of the performance.

  • Michael with telecaster.

    Music tales several forms: live performance, electronics and sound embedded in the films.

des près ou des loin / 咫尺天涯

  • Premiered in April, 2020 as part of the Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago) Quarentine Concerts. It is a 30-minute piece for video and electronics

  • The world that used to be near us suddenly becomes almost unreachable and surreal. de près ou de loin 咫尺天涯 looks at and listens to a small slice of our world, with the hunch that something else is there. This work was made under the force of social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The condition of inaccessibility abetted a posture of looking out the window for a long period of time. It also allowed us to sense the incalculable distance between individual reality and the virtual world.

Collaborative scores

  • The lizard that changes color (I)

    Written in 2020, for xiao and melodica

  • The lizard that changes color (III)

    Text score that ties the appearance of a tone to the sighting of a lizard.

  • Time Subsisting in Time

    Score for ensemble that combines graphics (variations on a paper work by Cherlyn) with notation.

burnt rose

  • This work has a live performance and a set of images (papers color with baked-rose pigments). The live performance feature video and film projection plus sine tones, guitar and the stone sounds of a large mortar & pestle (molcajete).

  • The interaction of sine tones and guitar creates layers of transitory beating as a parallel to the vibrant materiality of the paper works projected on screen.