Sonic intervention: 21st Century Down-Time

chair

Brooke Cardwell

For my performance piece, I wanted to concentrate on the body as a space that is transformed before the eye with the use of changes in sound. I have a seating area set up in the centre of a room with a book before it. I repeat a scene of walking in toward the seat, wiping off the chair, sitting to read a book, putting the book down, then getting up and walking to the opposite side to start over again. The routinized motions that my body goes through stay constant throughout the piece (save for the last few runs through), while the sound changes from more organic and believable sounds to more distorted and mechanical sounds as my motions repeat. Once the background sounds have become completely mechanical, I begin to cut out parts of the attempted leisure and speed up the tempo.

With this project, I was hoping to convey the idea that we are increasingly controlled by outside forces—especially technology. In my performance, I am controlled by the sounds as I am trying to keep up with them as I perform my scene like I feel we are controlled by trying to keep up with the newest technologies and to continuously reshape our lives to tailor them. The way that my movements speed up at the end of the piece further exemplifies the idea that technology pulls us away from moments that we would normally use for leisure (i.e. reading a book) and gets us moving as quickly as possible to ‘keep busy’ or to accomplish more tasks per day because we are now able to. The piece was experimental and something that I never thought that I would even try, but I am overall happy with the result and portrayal of my message.

bending

 

reading

 

 

click to watch video on YouTube!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuZHAZ6f0lg

Installation Location: Room 249
materials: Me, chair, book, speakers, sound source (laptop)

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VAS2250-002 >>UWO2013