RAFT

Hailing from Brooklyn, RAFT is Pat Noecker's exploration of technology and sound through the cellphone and apps. With an emphasis on collaboration, RAFT has been exploring composition through IOS apps and the potentiality of crowd-sourced collage. By using the cell phone and text messaging in combination with loopers and electronics, he creates sonic architecture both composed and based on audience-generated multi media messages.

RAFT has worked in collaboration with Liars, These Are Powers, n0 things, and Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang. Noecker's projects have been hosted by MoMA, the Whitney, PS1, the Kennedy Center, the Getty Museum, London ICA, and the San Francisco Fillmore. Critical acclaim has come from numerous publications such as Rolling Stone, Wire, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Washington Post, Spin, Time-Out, the New York Times, Impose, Huffington Post, NME, ID and more. RAFT is also the curator of ASSEMBLE, a two-year-old series of improvisational collaborative round robins that has featured artists such as Bob Boilen (NPR's All Songs Considered), Jerry Busher (Fugazi), and Taraka Larson (Prince Rama).

As an extension of his technologically inspired performances, Noecker released an app in October of 2014 called TRANSMISSIONS. TRANSMISSIONS is an hour-long improvisatory ensemble piece marked by repetitive and sustained tones of A and E. The TRANSMISSIONS app allows audience members to participate in this collaborative experiment, which seeks to re mix large spaces through sound and the potential of collective action. As the possibilities of making art with the cell phone take on a deeper level, RAFT's self-titled genre of Cellphonism stands to recontextualize the instrument from a communication device to one that can generate art and energy.