Brian Black, Lily Yates, Dom Cooper, and Zane Alexander S. B. are collaborators on “Is It a Person, Place, or Thing?” They are interested in how people connect to the world and how this data might be translated into a visual and audio format. Brian Black is a multimedia artist with a focus on installation and performance art. Lily Yates is a vocalist, sound maker, and performer that focuses on exploring performance as play, as well as a tool for mindfulness and creating community in unexpected ways. Zane Alexander S.B. is a composer, performer, and community music organizer that creates experimental music. Dom Cooper is a California-based musician, artist, composer, and performer, whose practice is based around the voice.
Artist Location: San Diego, CA
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PARTICIPATION
Performance by Brian Black and Zane Alexander S. B.
The “Sound of Friction” is a performance in which the two artists use their bodies to sand a large wooden artifact. Brian and Zane will be dressed in coverall suits constructed with varying grades of sandpaper. With their bodies, the artists manipulate the wooden form creating both changes in sound and structure. This durational performance juxtaposes exaggerated physical gestures with a subtle sonic experience.
Performance:
Is It a Person, Place, or Thing? is a sound-performance that engages the audience by collecting data about their personal experiences and transforms that information into a choral- output format. During the performance, participants are interviewed at a workstation and asked a series of questions about a person, place, or thing. That information is run through a human resource filter to extrapolate data. The vocal-performance team interprets the extrapolated data and uses it in a durational audio performance near the collection site. This cycle of interviews, extrapolations, and vocal outputs will run for the duration of the event. Employing the structure of a social science experiment, the artists transform audience input into a discordant mix of data and sound.