Miller’s second video installation, “33 Improvisations”, was at 3S Artspace, from Aug.1 to Sept.28, 2025, as part of their celebration of artists who have shown in their gallery over the last 10 years.
There are 11 drawings, all done very quickly, with no editing or planning.
There are 11 poems/word sequences, all written while looking intently at each of those drawings – they are directly related to them and have almost zero editing. Recorded here as recitation.
There are 11 acoustic guitar pieces, all improvisations, based on both the drawings and the poems. With at most a slight pre-conceived idea before recording.
Hence, 33 Improvisations.
Everything was done as quickly as possible, with extremely little internal censoring. To get to the raw/spontaneous workings of the mind, beyond analysis, beyond editing.
“It’s a movie but the images don’t move.”
His first video, The Davis Square Symphony (2018), transforms traffic patterns in Davis Square, Somerville, MA, into an orchestral score.
Miller shot Davis Square from five different angles in the four different seasons and edited the film to be musical. Each season has its own harmony: spring is the most consonant, winter the most dissonant. Scored for full orchestra, vehicles become strings, pedestrians become wind instruments, bicycles become snare drums, etc.. Using a post-John Cage composition approach of his own devising, chords and motifs he could never have consciously planned appear in true beauty. The music is dictated by the initial conditions e created, and the mundane world of street traffic is transformed.
It was part of Miller’s installation “Transmuting the Prosaic” at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, March 15 – Oct.12, 2020 and at 3S Artspace, in Portsmouth, NH, from Nov.25, 2022. through Jan. 29, 2023.
The Davis Square Symphony is supported in part by a grant from the Somerville Arts Council, a local agency supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and a grant from the Awesome Foundation. Thanks to Somerville Cable Access Television, Jesse Kreitzer, Debra McLaughlin, and Joanne Kaliontzis.
It has been suggested that this idea can be applied to any location, not un-like Christo’s work. Like Miller’s other compositions utilizing natural phenomena (which traffic patterns ultimately are), the translation of the world into music can adapt to the situation at hand.