Akin to a hypnosis script, a voice beckons you to enter an inner realm which houses the digital and analog, the mundane and strange. Play in an open field, ruminate your love life in a rocking chair, dance under the gaze of eternally unblinking eyeballs. Take care not to forget what you’ve experienced once you’ve woken up.
“(ノ ∀ )ノ⌒･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ ･*☆( ( ω( ω (☆ω☆) ω )ω ) )C= C= C= C= C=┌(;・ω・)┘” arose out of discussion of the strangeness that can arise from everyday things, places, and feelings. Our piece draws out latent feelings such as doubt, fear, or frustration from the listener and invites those feelings to linger.
For best results, please listen with headphones.
Rococo June created “(ノ ∀ )ノ⌒･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ ･*☆( ( ω( ω (☆ω☆) ω )ω ) )C= C= C= C= C=┌(;・ω・)┘” as part of the 2022 4th wAVe Digital Arts Intensive. Rococo June is led by Rosie Kaplan and features students and alumni Connie Li, Rob Walker, Conny Zhao, and Jun Zhao.
Connie Li (MA ’22) is a violinist, composer, and writer from Marietta, Georgia. She is a current graduate student in Gallatin’s MA Program, focusing on frameworks of the body in western art music and Chinese medicine.
Rob Walker (BA ’85) is a composer with 16 major motion picture credits including Perks of Being a Wallflower, High School Musical III, and College Road Trip. His music has been in 74 Television Series, 182 Episodes. His television credits include Ted Lasso and Friday Night Lights. He recently completed music for the HBO series Perry Mason. His music has been heard internationally in over 45 countries. As a trumpet player, Walker has worked with notable artists such as Wayne Newton, Natalie Cole, Ray Charles, The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Supremes, and The Moody Blues.
Conny Zhao (MA ’23) is a first-year graduate student in Gallatin’s MA Program, where she aims to combine music performance and composition, theater, ethnomusicology, and multimedia arts to research and present the tradition of Mongolian long-song (urtyn duu). She graduated from the University of Tennessee in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in Music and Culture and a minor in Chinese and afterward, spent a year studying long-song at Inner Mongolia Arts University in China on a Fulbright Performing and Creative Arts Award. Conny hopes to incorporate underrepresented musical traditions into Western academic and artistic spaces while disseminating her own academic and artistic work as resources for cross-cultural collaborative performances, compositions, and education.
Jun Zhou (BA ’23) is a digital media artist who is concentrating on Cyberspace Narrative at NYU Gallatin. Her works focus on the potential of aesthetic perceptions and explore psychosomatic experiences in relation to identity and technology. Her sources of inspiration include films, anime, architecture, and postmodern philosophy.