WAV_LENGTH_01

By Temporary Distortion

Sunday, July 21

Work-in-Progress Performance 4pm | Conference 5pm

Free but registration required

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

WAV_LENGTH_01 is the first in a series of media art performances having to do with wavelengths of light and sound. Each performance in the series will serve as a monochromatic meditation on the human experience of a single color in the visible spectrum and a corresponding parallel sound. The series borrows structural elements and narrative resonance from Michael Snow’s 1967 experimental film, Wavelength, which Artforum hailed as “probably the most rigorously composed movie in existence.” Snow’s 45-minute slow zoom on an empty room, punctuated by four fleeting “human events,” provides an anti-narrative blueprint that interrogates the possibility of reframing spectatorship as a consciousness-altering exercise. Through this intricate framework, the WAV_LENGTH series will delve into the profound connections between sensory perception and emotional resonance, inviting audiences to immerse themselves in rich, monochromatic worlds where sight, sound and story have the potential to both converge or refract into individual wavelengths.

WAV_LENGTH_01 is focused on red—thought to be the first color a newborn can discern, the last color we see before dying, and the first color to be named by primitive cultures all over the world. Each project in the series will survey the history, cultural coding, and sensual impact of a single hue, in order to explore how color resides not in light or material, but in the expansive variety of embodied observations made by the viewer. Color perception will be shown to be a complicated phenomenon that is relative, interdependent, and constantly in flux—interpreted by a perceiving body that is socially coded, individual, and unavoidably rife with history. The series as a whole will be used as a prism to perform an extended meditation on the contingent nature of color perception, or what Josef Albers called “the most relative medium in art.”

Digital Arts and Technology in Performance: an interactive public discussion

Following WAV_LENGTH_01 there will be an interactive public discussion on Digital Arts and Technology in Performance with Sarah Bay-Cheng (Dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design at York University), Dan Shanahan (Artistic Director of Torn Space Theater, Melissa Meola (Associate Director of Torn Space Theater), Frank Napolski (lighting designer, Groupwork co-founder) and Kenneth Collins/John Sully (Temporary Distortion).

This conversation will focus on some of the current experiments in live performance and digital media that will shape the future of contemporary theater. In addition to the use of digital media in the theater, we will discuss how AI, algorithms, and bleeding-edge digital technologies have the potential to impact the arts, pushing the boundaries of creativity, and offering new possibilities for storytelling. This event will bring together artists, academics, and audiences for a joint discussion to explore what lies ahead for digital technologies in the theatrical landscape.

Sarah Bay-Cheng is Dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design and Professor of Theatre & Performance Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research focuses on the intersections of media and performance, including four books, most recently Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field (2015) and more than 100 essays, lectures and reviews. Bay-Cheng has taught as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Media and Cultural Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and a founding co-host for On TAP: A Theatre & Performance Studies Podcast.

Kenneth Collins is Artistic Director of Temporary Distortion, a NYC-based contemporary performance company with the mission to create experimental work that is accessible to all. Temporary Distortion (named one of the “Best New York Theater companies” by TimeOut NY Magazine) has maintained its roots in downtown NYC as an invested stakeholder in the local community for over 20 years, while also showing work at notable venues in 30 cities across 14 countries around the world. Collins is Assistant Professor of Media Arts Production in the Department of Film & Media Arts at the University of Utah.

John Sully is a three-time NYSCA award-winning composer, sound designer, multi-instrumentalist, and graduate of Yale’s Sound Design program who has been a core member of Temporary Distortion since joining the company in 2006. His music for stage and film has crossed the globe, including numerous cities in Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Eastern Europe, Oceania, as well as North and South America. Sully is Audio Director at The Sarasota Players and Adjunct Professor of Music at the State College of Florida.