INFORMATION :: biography
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Brian Schorn is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. His education includes an MFA in Electronic and Music and Recording Media from Mills College, an MFA in Graphic Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art, an MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University, an MFA in Photography from the University of Michigan, a BFA in Photography from the Center for Creative Studies and two years of pre-med at Oakland University. Schorn has taught art, graphic design and creative writing for over ten years including a tenured Associate Professor position at Eastern Michigan University and Visiting/Adjunct positions at Grand Valley State University, the University of Michigan and Brown University.
Schorn studied music composition with Fred Frith, Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros and electronic music with Chris Brown and Maggi Payne. His music has been performed in France, Austria, New York, Oakland and elsewhere throughout the United States. He has performed with other composers and artists such as Cecil Taylor, Maryanne Amacher, Steina Vasulka, Ken Butler and Clay Chaplin. His electronic music has aired on numerous national and international radio stations including KUNM in Santa Fe, WOBC at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Village Nomade Radio in Marseille, France and Not the Normal Shit Radio in The Netherlands. His graphic musical scores were exhibited at The Mess Hall in Chicago as part of the Open Source/Open Ear event. For the last few years, Schorn has been active performing live electronic music incorporating theatrical elements, video and poetry. Schorn’s music appears on the compilation CDs “Open Source/Open Ear,” “The Last Signal,” "Clinical Jazz" and "Power/field 2." His 60 second composition “Under a Submersive Sun” toured the Midwest with the 60x60 Project in 2007. His first internet release, "Textures," a collection of text-sound compositions is available for free download at www.cyclene.com. In 2009, Schorn's graphic score "Nebula" was published in Notations21: An Anthology of Innovative Musical Notation." In 2010, Deep Listening Institute will publish more graphic scores in Deep Listening Anthology II.
Schorn’s visual art has been exhibited and published widely for the last twenty years including numerous solo exhibitions. In 2007, his solo art museum exhibition entitled “Magnum Opus: A 25 Year Retrospective,” featured over seventy-five works of painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, installation, sound art, performance art, video and graphic design. Other recent exhibitions include “Human Form” at Studio 71 South in Grand Rapids, Michigan; “Computer Punch Card Art” at the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science in Souix Falls, South Dakota and “78th Regional Exhibition” at the Muskegon Museum of Art in Muskegon, Michigan.
Schorn’s graphic design has appeared in many books and magazines including Emigre, Ray Gun, Eye, Typography Now II, Cool Type and Typography 15. He was recently featured in Eye magazine (#63) in the article "Dark Tools of Desire: Surrealism and Design" written by Rick Poynor. In 2010, he will participate in the exhibition "Surrealism and Graphic Design" curated by Rick Poynor at The Moravian Gallery in Brno, The Czech Republic.
Schorn’s creative writing has been published in numerous books, journals and anthologies including Strabismus, a full-length book of poems, Palm Desert, Joshua Tree, One Score More, Sulfur and O.blek. His writing has been translated into the Danish and published in Banana Split, a literary journal in Copenhagen, Denmark. Schorn’s hand-made poetry books are in the Marvin Sackner Collection of Concrete and Visual Poetry. He was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize in 1991. New poems were recently published in the journal Unsaid.
From 2001–06, Schorn explored interdisciplinary works that incorporated electronic music, computer-triggered audio, live video, poetic monologues and body-based endurance performance art. The content of the performances explored ritualistic ceremony and initiatory challenges that encouraged social, physical and psychological questioning.
Since 2007, Schorn has been deeply immersed in contemplative study and practice including the contemplative arts of brush calligraphy, ikebana (flower arranging) and haiku. Additionally, opportunities to live in the mountains of Colorado and Vermont initiated a return to his lifelong connection to the natural world. As a result, Schorn is currently exploring environmental art, deep ecology, natural history and outdoor adventure. His recent artist residencies include Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, MI and I-Park Artists Enclave in East Haddam, CT where the natural environment directly informed a new body of work. The work includes audio field recordings, electronic music composition, outdoor performance, calligraphy, sculpture with natural materials, photography and computer-generated imaging.