Kari Watson premieres Fuse, a new solo performance for analog modular synthesizers and programmed drum machines. The piece plays with clock function and tempo ramps, moving between analog and digital environments as Watson shapes the sound in real time.

Fuse engages a quadraphonic speaker array in tandem with a spatial audio sculpture of unhoused speaker cones distributed through the room. A custom synth garment—made in collaboration with visual artist and designer Av Grannan—houses patch cables and an XLR snake that tie Watson’s body into the setup. Modular instruments sit atop custom ceramic tables made with visual artist and ceramicist Paige Schlosser, designed so cables can be woven in and around the surfaces.

Watson takes theorist Donna Haraway’s cyborg as an origin point for the project: a figure of synthesis and hybridity, where humans and machines are enmeshed and the boundaries between body and environment are continually unsettled. Fuse makes that unsettled boundary audible, asking where the performer ends and the surrounding system begins.

Kari Watson (b.1998, Philadelphia, Pa.) is a composer, performer, and intermedia artist working across contemporary concert music, electroacoustic composition, live performance, and installation. As a performer on analog synthesizers, Watson integrates custom spatialization systems built in Max/MSP with multi-speaker arrays, foregrounding tactility and drama in spatial sound.

Watson’s work has been presented at Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Darmstadt; Donaueschinger Musiktage, Donaueschingen; MINU Festival for Expanded Music, Copenhagen; Les Écoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau, Fontainebleau; the Composers Now Dialogues Series; Ravinia Festival’s Breaking Barriers Festival; and Frequency Festival, Chicago, among others. Additional presentations have taken place at KM28 and Richten25, Berlin; The Horse Hospital and IKLECTIK Art Lab, London; Werkstatt für Improvisierte Musik Zürich; Khimaira, Stockholm; the Chicago Cultural Center; and the International Museum of Surgical Science.

Collaborators include Jennifer Torrence, Maya Bennardo, Sarah Saviet, Yarn/Wire, Collective Lovemusic, Eduard Teregulov, Ensemble Dal Niente, TAK Ensemble, MIVOS Quartet, Line Upon Line, and Quatuor Diotima. Recent projects have also been presented through Roulette; Experimental Sound Studio; and International Anthem’s 11×11 Series with Katinka Kleijn.

Recordings include enclosures (Sawyer Editions, 2025) and VISTAS, with Katinka Kleijn (Elektramusic, 2025). Watson received the 2023 Kranichstein Music Prize for Composition from the Darmstädter Ferienkurse and a 2022 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Watson is currently a Ph.D. candidate in music at the University of Chicago.

Presented in partnership with the Graham Foundation