Senior music lecturer Frank Mauceri is a composer and a saxophonist, but his latest project is a purely visual one. Until November 7, 2018, Mauceri will be featured in the exhibit Above, Below, Before, Behind, Within at UMA’s Charles Danforth Gallery. The show spotlights five Maine artists exploring their point of view.

Seven of his computer-generated prints are on display. Mauceri says the intersection of music and information technology is an area of special interest for him. “I write computer programs to explore processes that interest me. The work in this exhibit comes from an ongoing, three-year-long project called Snarl.” The work, he explains, is created by generating three-dimensional models of knots, tangles, and twisted surfaces. “I take projections and details of these models, and produce prints and animations from these projections. 

“My work engages the problem of designing systems. I am fascinated by the creative potentials of generative systems and I depend on being surprised by the traces they leave. I am often inspired by musical processes and processes of human interaction. The Snarl series explores connections between harmonic relationships, like one sees in Lissajous figures or mechanical engraving (e.g.Guilloché patterns), and the gestures of drawing or dancing.”

Mauceri says the work grew out of his interest in using computers for music composition and for making performances with interactive audio processing. “I began doing visual work in classroom demonstrations for a course I was teaching on interactive media for the arts,” he explained. “Out of that class developed a personal exploration of print and video media using the computer as my primary tool.”

The other four artists featured in the show are Eileen Gillespie, Kristin Dillon, Rachel Zheng, and Heather Lyon, who explore the media of painting, photography, installation, and performance/video.