Memphis-born sound sculptor Ellen Fullman (1957),
studied ceramics and sculpture in college and got into performance art.
After graduation she moved to Minnesota where she made the feminist performance and sound sculpture Streetwalker (1980): she walked
through a red-light district
wearing a metallic skirt connected to a microphone and speakers, an "instrument" to both produce sound and protect her from sexual assaults.
Inspired by Alvin Luciers Music on a Long Thin Wire,
Fullman turned to music for single wire in 1980.
In 1981 she relocated to New York.
She fell in love with the extended tones generated by long, vibrating wires, and devoted herself to just intonation via a self-built "long string instrument", made of 100 wires (30-meter long bass strings and 10- to 20-meter long treble strings) played simultaneously by three performers.
Her first compositions/performances for this instrument are documented on
Long String Instrument (Apollo, 1985) and
Change of Direction (New Albion, 1999).
She moved to Austin in the mid-1980s.
Body Music (XI, 1992) contains Work for 4 (1987),
performed on a 40-meter long string installation (her first composition for
an ensemble),
Bass Song (1992),
and Body Music (1992), epic-scale works that stand as
ragas of the post-industrial age. imbued with corrosive grace and savage elegance.
Suspended Music (Periplum, 1997) is a collaboration between
Ellen Fullman on her long string instrument and
Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening Band.
Fullman's 40-minute Texas Travel Texture debuted here, and is by far
the most intriguing of the two pieces.
Fullman has also scored the dance piece
Movement Meditation (1996), for 150 women trained in martial arts,
and the quartet Stratified Bands - Last Kind Words (2002).
She moved to Seattle in 1997, and then to
the Bay Area in 2003.
Ort (Choose, 2004) is a collaboration between Ellen Fullman and
Konrad Sprenger (an alias for producer Jorg Hiller) that has nothing to do with her main career. It is merely
a collection of alt-country songs.
Staggered Stasis (Anomalous, 2004),
recorded in 1987 in Austin (Texas),
returns to her droning minimalist overtones. It is probably the most intense and dramatic exposition of her
aesthetics since Body Music.
Recorded collaborations include:
Ellen Fullman + Sean Meehan (Cut, 2007) with percussionist Sean Meehan,
Fluctuations (Deep Listening, 2008) with trombonist Monique Buzzarte,
Mind of no Mind/ Event Locations (Important, 2010) with electronic musician Eleh.
Through Glass Panes (Important, 2011) contains four compositions for
long-string instrument and other instruments or solo:
Never Gets Out of Me (10:26), a duet with cellist Theresa Wong
Flowers (09:56), a trio with Travis Weller and Henna Cho,
Through Glass Panes (21:22) and
Event Locations No.2 (20:10).
The 40-minute piece of The Air Around Her (february 2016) was a live collaboration with cellist Okkyung Lee.
