sound collaborations: Ryan Black & JaNae Contag

info | projects | Contag CV | Black CV

Collaboration has become an important part of my art practice over the last decade, as I’ve had the opportunity to work on researching, developing, and creating projects with Ryan Black. Ryan is a sound artist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and sound designer who shares my interest in making interactive, experimental, performative, sonic, and visual work.

Our work together explores the possibilities of technology at the confluence of entertainment, interactive play, and science. We often incorporate visual scores, drawings, and maps to ground the listening experience in our performances. Central to our collaborative experimental sound work is creating soundscapes that translate and respond to the physical architecture and environment that surrounds us.

Below, I’ve documented our collaborative experimental sound projects with descriptions. Clicking the link on any of the following projects will bring you to the individual project page on my website.

“Temporal Biomes”

Live Performances
Commissioned by The 150 Media Stream in Chicago, IL

Listen to Temporal Biomes, Volumes I and II:

Temporal Biomes is an original experimental soundscape project commissioned by the 150 Media Stream and performed in the lobby of the 150 N. Riverside building in Chicago, IL. Our structured improvisational performance transforms the personal and shared architecture that defines corporate office spaces through imaginative, evolving sound. Temporal Biomes invites viewers to slow down in their day-to-day lives, and spend time immersed in a sonic journey that navigates through imagined forests, deserts, coral reefs, outer space, and beyond.

Temporal Biomes, Volumes I and II were recorded live at The 150 Media Stream in Chicago, IL on June 14th and June 15th, 2023. Performances were in collaboration with the current works on view, curated by Yuge Zhou.

Go to Temporal Biomes page to learn more about this project.

“Thought Music”

Interactive Interface, PureData Programming
Installed for Habits exhibition at Parallax Lab in Chicago, IL

In creating “Thought Music”, I started with the process of recording every songwriting idea, melodic line, or soundscape I wrote throughout the month of February, 2019. Ryan and I inputted the 70 audio files into Pure Data, in a visually coded playback system we designed connected to a MIDI interface for viewer interaction. Viewers are able to manipulate time in the same way that a calendar allows one to interact with an entire month of time in a single visual frame. The program presents 28 days of audio time in a constrained time period, based on how long the user wears the headphones.

This interactive sound installation was on view at Parallax Lab in Chicago for an exhibition titled Habits in May, 2019.

Go to Thought Music page to learn more about this project.

“Superstructure“

Live Performance for Open House Chicago
Commissioned by The 150 Media Stream in partnership with MAS Context
In conversation with “Welcome to Tribuneville: An Imaginary Vision of an Old Chicago that Could Have Been” illustration by Klaus

Listen to Superstructure:

Superstructure is an original experimental soundscape composed and performed live by artists JaNae Contag and Ryan Black, commissioned by The 150 Media Stream. The performance is in conversation with the piece “Tribuneville” by architectural cartoonist Klaus in partnership with MAS Context, streaming in the lobby of the 150 N. Riverside building. Superstructure explores the 150 N. Riverside building’s site, construction, and architecture in a series of sonic movements. Through the performance of live instruments, field recordings, and readymade objects (drill, concrete mixer, hammer), the performance invites visitors to reflect on the poetics of Chicago’s infrastructure and architecture, both real and imagined.

Superstructure was performed live in the lobby of 150 N. Riverside on October 19th, 2024 during Open House Chicago.

“Landship”

Live Performance and Experimental Sound Composition
Commissioned by Synth House Chicago

Above video is a compilation of clips from documentation during rehearsals.

Listen to Landship:

Landship (2024) is an original composition commissioned by Synth House Chicago to launch their “Live from Home” concert series. The piece was recorded as a live stream, and fed into visual processing software to add a meditative visual overlay. We wrote Landship as a love letter to the lively ecosystem outside of our studio. The composition includes live instrumentation as well as a live input from a boundary microphone capturing sounds of birds, airplanes, cicadas, and rustling leaves outside the window (video of our set-up). The composition is structured in five movements, with each movement as a reflection about a different life form in the natural world, in order of size: mycelium, ant, squirrel, coyote, oak tree, and the stratosphere.

Landship was performed and recorded live on March 30th, 2024 and May 3rd, 2024.

“Isolazen”

Album by JaNae Contag and Ryan Black

We wrote the album Isolazen (2023) during a state of forced catharsis while we were both dealing with illness. The album intertwines the quotidian aspects of sickness with the constructs of the anxious mind, sonifying the imagined and surreal realities of the hypochondriac. Isolazen explores human relationships to sound, memory, meditation, and music, as a path towards agency.

The work was exhibited in the Carlson Tower Gallery at North Park University in April, 2023.

Go to Isolazen page to learn more about this project.

“LatexLand”

Live Performance Video
Exhibited at The Ralph Arnold Gallery at Loyola University Chicago

LatexLand is a video art and experimental sound performance we composed and performed on August 6th, 2024. The video and visual score were exhibited at The Ralph Arnold Gallery at Loyola University Chicago in September, 2024.

Part 1: One subject paints lines around a performance space in a suburban backyard, wearing red latex gloves. Latex is an organic material derived directly from tree rubber, and is worn in this piece as a “second skin” and instrument.

Part 2: Both artists perform a composition and leitmotif within the performance space at night. Each instrument and sound, from the doorbell to the latex sleeves, represents a character in a conversation with the land.

Quasi-imaginary lines divide territories, states, countries, and delineate ownership and authority over land… and the way the land is used. These mapped lines form the basis of control and power that an entity/individual has over its domain, but also are used to construct a property, a plat, a home. “Home Ownership” is an aspiration of the American Dream. Yet, “Land Ownership” connotes the taking, stealing, and enroaching that is hallmark to the history of countries in pursuit of power by way of land acquisition.

Territory and property lines from border walls to backyard fences create tension and conflict, but also are the basis of community, refuge, and home. It’s an idiosyncratic construct, as the land belongs to no one but the earth itself.

Go to LatexLand page to learn more about this project.

“Alette”

Live Performance
Commissioned by The 150 Media Stream in conversation with
“Overheard in the Underworld” by Lilli Carré and Laura Harrison

Listen to Alette:

Alette is an original composition commissioned by The 150 Media Stream and performed live in the lobby of 150 N. Riverside in Chicago. Our piece is a soundscape responding to “Overheard in the Underworld”, a collaborative animated installation by Lilli Carré and Laura Harrison. The animated piece explores a subterranean world of metamorphosis, grief, and reflection, created as a poetic response to The Descent of Alette, a book-length feminist poem by Alice Notley.

We structured our composition and performance as a series of leitmotifs and representative phrases and permutations. In seven cycles, the phrases change or are voiced by different instruments, including various percussive layers and live sound effects including squishing, rattling, and pulling tape from cassettes until the tape piles on the floor. The result is a circular journey that responds to imagery where “a shape-shifting woman protagonist confronts shadow selves and power structures in pursuit of healing and transformation, moving from despair to revolt and renewal.” (The 150 Media Stream)

Alette was performed and recorded live on November 14th, 2024.

“Ascent from Twilight”

Live Performance
Commissioned by The 150 Media Stream in conversation with
interactive video work, “STREAM” by Gabriel Barcia-Colombo

Above video documentation features music we composed for the performance and interactive filming day.

Listen to Ascent from Twilight:

Ascent from Twilight is an original composition commissioned by The 150 Media Stream and performed live in the lobby of the 150 N. Riverside building in Chicago. Our composition is a 10-movement soundscape to create an energetic sonic backdrop for Gabriel Barcia-Colombo’s interactive video art piece, “Stream” recorded live over two days. Each movement pulls inspiration from various experiences with moving water, titles including “Tsunami Warning”, “Glass Meditation”, “Lunar Pull”, “Sail With Me”, “In the Trench”, “Spiral Jetty”, “Drifting Lull”, and more. In the composition, we incorporated live, looping percussion as well as analog synthesizers, trumpet, and electric guitar.

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo’s piece, “Stream” is a Renaissance-style silent composition of a very large crowd pausing to witness something captivating yet unnamed. Featuring over 150 individuals, including many Chicagoans, the artwork draws a frame around the notion of community and the shared experiences that make up daily life in a large city.

Ascent from Twilight was performed and recorded live on October 16th, 2025.

About Ryan Black

Ryan Black is a sound artist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, President of REB Records and sound designer. With a vast artistic vision for creating experiences, Black is grounded by two decades of audio production and professional work as a jazz and classical musician. Black’s audio production and art installation work leans heavily into both his sound design experience and jazz influence. He merges diegetic atmospheres with percussive arpeggiators, mutated synths, audience participation and wistful drum beats. The result is a constructed universe that conveys cinematic imagination and lush realism, pushing audiences to become not only viewer but participants in the experience.

Black is a faculty member at Columbia College Chicago in the Audio Arts & Acoustics program and works as a sound designer for Rocketcat Games. He has been a featured speaker at the International Conductor’s Guild and works as a live sound and recording engineer in Chicago. He holds his Masters of Performing Arts Technology in Sound Engineering from University of Michigan where he also completed his Bachelors of Arts in Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation in addition to a Bachelors in Performing Arts Technology.

His most familiar work environments include large scale studios, concert venues, production studios, corporate podiums, festival stages and sometimes a laptop by the lake.

About JaNae Contag

JaNae Contag is an artist and musician exploring cultural landscapes, technology, and the mall.

Contag’s art practice spans photography, video, music, sound, performance, digital art, drawing, and interactive installation. Her work investigates contemporary aspirational lifestyles, and the idiosyncratic intersections of tourism and elitism. Shopping malls, airports, lifestyle centers, megachurches, and suburban subdivisions are often active participants and central characters in her work. Her work in sound/music operates as an active intervention with the environment where it is performed, from corporate lobbies to festival stages, dive bars, living room birthday parties, and suburban backyards.

Contag’s artwork has been exhibited at galleries and museums across the country, including Co-Lab Projects in Austin and the Michael and Noemi Neidorff Gallery in San Antonio, TX; The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Intersect STL, Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts, Free Paarking, and The Luminary Center for the Arts in St. Louis, MO; Central Booking and Trestle Projects in Brooklyn, NY; and The 150 Media Stream, Parallax Labs, The Carlson Tower Gallery, and The Wilmette Theatre in Chicago, IL, and others. Her work has been featured in Esthetic Lens Magazine, Scapi Magazine, Waveform Magazine, Synth House Chicago, VEVO, Mythic Rhythmic, BuzzMusic, Earmilk, Vents Magazine, Woozy Magazine, AXIOS Chicago, Fotoseptiembre, The Chicago Tribune, The COMP Art & Design Magazine, Vellum Magazine, Forgotten Chicago, Radio DePaul, Advance Your Art: From Artist to Creative Entrepreneur Podcast, and the Artists of the Industry Podcast.

Contag lives and works in Chicago, where she teaches Photography & Video Art at Loyola University’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts. She is a member of the Society for Photographic Education and has presented at the SPE Midwest Regional Conference. Contag received her MFA in Visual Art from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Art at Washington University in St. Louis and her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio.