Rachel Dickey

Virtual Breakout During the Outbreak June 6th Livestream

Virtual BreakOut During the OutBreak Videos [VBODOBV] I

Awakened Silence

Proposed work as accepted for soundpedro 2020:
Awakened Silence

With the ever growing rise of the death toll by mass shooting in the U.S., Awakened Silence is a project that memorializes the lives lost, by putting the audience in place of the first responders. As police, firefighters and paramedics, appear on the scene after horrific events of mass shooting, they report the nightmarish sound of incessant chirping, bleating and incongruously cheerful boom box beats of victims’ cell phones. The project attempts to use conflict as a creative tool in order to find ways to address the ill conditions within society in order to refuse to allow tragedies of gun violence to become commonplace. The involves the filming of hundreds of volunteer’s cell phone turning on after a 24 hours period of silence and captures texts, email alerts, and notifications of all kinds. The resulting recorded videos of each phone turning on with all the visual and audio notifications were compiled into a projected performance of darkness and silence gradually awakened by a crescendo of light and sound.

Acknowledgments: This project was produced by Studio Dickey in collaboration with Daena Vogt-lowell, Noushin Radnia, Sara Shamloo, and Jonathan Warner.