Transforming the roof of the @bendixbuilding into an opera, a gathering space, and a community-activated instrument all at once.
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https://www.npr.org/2022/06/21/1105793891/ed-yong-an-immense-world-animal-senses
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murmuration
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mthwakazi [ ],
our vocals are unitelligible, oscillationg states of decay and blooming,
linguistic entropy and decay
cassettes too entropy and decya
./site specific
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scultpure, multichannel video, edited and live audio,
audience interactiveity, ruputre audience and performer divide
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talk about how the sea sax also was temporarily installed in the ocean (leave no trace) [also include photos of that in main video…]
it brings together musical instrumetns that all had thier own lives before becoming a part of mine.
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field recordings, forest sounds and singing by twa, eastern cape.
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strange
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Two channel video
projection mapping
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https://www.ohanbreiding.com/projects#/belly-of-a-glacier
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stygian (hagfish, whale falls)…
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https://clockshop.org/project/what-water-wants/
Ohan Breiding’s Promiscuous Ghost examines human grief & glacial bodies across a multimedia installation. Centered on the Rhône Glacier, which is expected to vanish by 2050, the work considers bodily fragility & collective resistance to climate change.
About
OCHI is pleased to present Promiscuous Ghost, an exhibition of new and recent work by artist Ohan Breiding. This is Breiding’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. Promiscuous Ghost will be on view at OCHI, located at 3301 W Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles, California from November 16 through December 21, 2024. An Artist’s Reception will be held on Saturday, November 16th with a book launch for Belly of a Glacier (Chapter 1: Ancient Ice Archive) from 4-5 PM and the opening of Promiscuous Ghost from 5-7 PM PDT.
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t\Animals, state power, socioecological and political histories and futurities, politicized animals, ie hagfish (deep sea), xyz (cicadas, insects and climate crisis, insect loss), . animals like hagfish, cicadas, x and y are markers of climate crises, x and political histories. ecological histories and futurities. what soundscapes/ecological histories are being threatened by climate ch?
soniferous animals and politicized speies ie snails, crabs (ocean acidification)
phenomena
/Our sounds interact, crosspollinate w sounds of the city, also same w hagfish sounds and sounds of city
I would like to thank Ben Kingsley for joining us tonight as a sound artist and bringing geogphone technology into the mix. Ben has places this geophone you can see is placed over there, it’s picking up on us and the building rn, a piece of seismological equipment that picks up very low frequency sounds and renders them audible to our ears, allowing us new ways to listen to the building and our interactions with it….so feel free to move around, or sit. And speaking of movement, this is an interactive opera, and we invite you to move as you listen, jessica will be guiding us in moving through the space if you chose to join her. I recommend doing so because it really lends a wild experience to physically feel the instrumentation in your body in new ways, to physicaly feel the resonance a sousaphone or piano in your bones. Of course if you prefer to sit please feel free to do so as well.
its about resonance so walk around, touch the piano,
ie see gill valves, pipe organ essays,
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cycles of decaying and blooming,
the unknown, uncertainties
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field recordings
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viola: harmonics, gravitational pulls, organ drones,
Change descritpon (ig, web, etc) cuz geophone not picking up footsteps but rather wind on windows,
nd the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
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Diatoms are algae that live in houses made of glass. They are the only organism on the planet with cell walls composed of transparent, opaline silica. Diatom cell walls are ornamented by intricate and striking patterns of silica.
Dinoflagellates are part of the phytoplankton, however, there are none in these images. All of these phytoplankton are diatoms. The ones with red inside are actually animals. They are larval copepods called nauplii.
Yes, I look forward to you sharing photos!
Thanks,
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key cheek fatigue, inflame, all poem words on sea sax/
living earth
fantastical creatures
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site-specific work, projectiion mapped to the warehouse walls, etc
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intimate ephemeral experiemtal interactive opera
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his of the bendix building:
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Stygian hagfish scenes
hagfish have no jaws and moray eels have two
pharyngeal jaws
They're agnathans — jawless fishes, and they are the only vertebrate with a skull but no vertebrae. Hagfish and the distantly related lampreys diverged from early vertebrates prior to the evolution of dentine, which enables vertebrate animals to have teeth.
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wonder is medicine in troubling times
! world of ownders book,
.. there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.That is Ada Limón, U.S. Poet Laureate, in her brief poem, “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” which could almost be read to suggest there’s enough on Earth worth wondering at, that the skies are a distraction. Almost.
. . .
Hello, thank you so much for being here for this performance, before we start I just want to sharea alittle bit about the project.
This performance is a little over 45 minutes long and there is a meet and greet afterwards so stick around, come talk to us! Bathrooms are inside and just down the hall.
This is an experimental and interactive opera that invites us to explore entanglements among humans and more-than-humans, phenomena and sound. We are joined tonight by so many incredible performers. Liminal Voices & Orchestra is here, members x y and z y. Liminal Voices and Orchestra is a choral-orchestral ensemble for experienced musicians that identify within the LGBTQ+/Gender Expansive/BBIA (Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian) communities. We are also joined by eight tapes, members x y and z y . eight tapes is a vocal collective of trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive musicians working at the intersection of professional, identity-driven, and community-building choral ensembles.A company of genre-fluid performers, adaptable arts educators, and energized community partners,eight tapes embodies the diversity of trans experience and excellence. We are also joined by an incredible group of local musicians who I would like to thank: Spencer Bowie, Mason Moy, Andrew Fong, Grant Laren, Victor Gonzalez, Grace Dashnaw, Nicki Chen, Simon maura, yenju chen, Adrian narro, Leora Malka, chris mckelway, and Rogelio resendiz.
I would like to thank Ben Kingsley for joining us tonight as a sound artist and bringing geogphone technology into the mix. This geophone you can see is placed over there, it’s a piece of seismological equipment that picks up very low frequency sounds and renders them audible to our ears, allowing us new ways to listen to the building and our interactions with it….so feel free to move around, or sit.
I would also like to thank Ring Road Sessions for documenting tonights performance.
I would like to thank Heidi duckler dance for hosting this event. In particular Heidi Duckler, Jessica Emmanuel, Raphaella Ziemba , Sharice Bryant . and our interns from Seuol Arts, Ian , Julie and Clia. As well as culture hub, especially stacy stearns . and the the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture.
And lastly I want to thank all of you for being here, enjoy!
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Rigby works with acoustical architecture, animal vocalizations, string harmonics, interspecies collaboration, resonant space, metamorphosis, dissonance, waste streams and international ecosystems, ecotones, sustained sound, soniferous bodies and fever dreams. In her compositions, eroding sea caves transmogrify into megafaunal breathers. Tortoise exhalations sound the ocarina-like wind sections. Pyrocene-scarred elderflorae shape harmonic structures. Percussion arrives via woodpecker bills and sea star feet. Human and amphibian vocals, cathedral bells, wild parrots, and TSA field recordings flesh out the operatics. Pipe organs and violas converse with cicadas and crabs. Meetings with living fossils—Przewalski's horses and hagfish—guide the scoring of brass instrumentation. Rigby’s raucous compositions conjure worlds as lush visually as they are sonically, where acoustic and material decay and regeneration happen at superspeed in kalaidoscopic, ultrachromatic chaos. Butterflies nectar on rotting figs and scorpion fish parade in fluorescent pink. Moving imaginaries featuring blooming cacti, slithering eels, and respiring sharks lay the foundation for acoustical imaginaries which in turn lay the foundation for future imaginaries, worlds which call into question ideas like: what does it mean to share physical and acoustical space with a vibrant spectrum of more-than-humans living on this planet? Where do we end, and where does the world begin? What do those liminal spaces sound like?
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opera opens w sea cave cello project footage, tion I and Sea Cave Complex (please see videos below) is played in tandem with the projections, entering into dialogue with audio from the street. The audio works are experimental compositions exploring a sea cave’s acoustical architecture, born of the project Sea Cave Transmogrification I, in which a sea cave became a sound sculpture via wire and bow. The audio from the original sea cave installation enters into an ephemeral, improvised dialogue with live audio occurring inside and around the building. Both sites—sea cave and staircase--enter into a soniferous relationship, transforming into something new entirely.
entangled sites
live opera and street sounds of la, environemtal mix.
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pipe, thru lines ie drains that run from roof to street
roof
window is wuivering in wind, making that audioble, rendering audioble the inaduibel, colalboration witth the wind, conversing w the wind, interacting w the win,d the building, colaboration w the building as collaboration . also the geohpone pikcing up some brass, also people talking, walking, coming through the building, . picking up reverberance ie of windows , glass on 11th floor.
In music, homophony is a texture where a main melody is supported by other parts that provide harmony. The main melody is usually the highest part and there is little rhythmic differentiation betw
audio ocean
geophoen picks up low freq we otherwise maybe counldnt hear
perception, realtiy
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Mention in writeup hirign queer choir, trans choir, Also mention that for Fudnign, grants,
I have selected twenty musicians (vocalists and instrumentalists) for a working performance of Life Cycle of a Fever Dream for a live audience on November 19, 2024 in Los Angeles. This funding would be used to help pay all the performers. Currently, I am funding this project myself from my savings account. The choir that I have hired, Liminal Voices & Orchestra, is a choral-orchestral ensemble for experienced musicians that identify within the LGBTQ+/Gender Expansive/BBIA (Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian) communities. They had their debut performance in August 2024 with their program "Tales from Resilience." The program consisted of historically marginalized composers and concluded with the California premiere of Afro-Brazilian composer José Maurício Nunes Garcia's Requiem in d. The second choir that I have hired, 8TPS, is a choral-ensemble for musicians that identify as trans/gender-expansive vocalists.
/ 8TPS is a vocal collective of trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive musicians working at the intersection of professional, identity-driven, and community-building choral ensembles. A company of genre fluid performers, adaptable arts educators, and energized community partners, 8TPS embodies the diversity of trans experience and excellence.8TPS is a polystylistic, a cappella-forward vocal collective of trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive musicians working at the intersection of professional, identity-driven, and community-building choral ensembles. A company of genre fluid performers, adaptable arts educators, and energized community partners, 8TPS’s mission is to curate niche musical selections for a wide audience and create spaces centered on trans joy.
Bio: "In the summer of 2024, Dr. Fabián Rodríguez Castro (they/he) launched their non-profit, Liminal Voices & Orchestra, a choral-orchestral ensemble for experienced musicians that identify within the LGBTQ+/Gender Expansive/BBIA (Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian) communities. They had their debut performance in August 2024 with their program "Tales from Resilience." The program consisted of historically marginalized composers and concluded with the California premiere of Afro-Brazilian composer José Maurício Nunes Garcia's Requiem in d. For more information please
8tps choir info:
Also mention in essay queer nature,
historiy of the building, resonance. when was the building bulit? acousitcal architeructure
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drones
homophony
caucophy
polyphony
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climatic pheonemoan (sea cave), clim chage (brislecones),
cycles of decay and regeneration
phenomena
perception
resonance
polyphony (ie w opera)
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/were not sure what’s gonna happen here tonight cuz it’s ephemeral interactive experimental improvised performance this is the first time this opera has been premiered and the first time this building has been activated by these geophones, if you wanna know more about the geophones ask ben kinsley,
you are a part of an experiment
in art speech before show talk about geophone and transforming building into living instrument
experimenting with geophone technology to help transform the roof of the @bendixbuilding into a community-activated instrument
via seismological equipment
geophone renders low frequency vibrations to create a spatial soundscape that is felt on bone level, that is felt as well as heard.
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*and how via you’re movements you become the perofmeers too ie just the fact that you’re here affects these geophones you’ll hear yourself interacting w this historic site
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Sturgeon fossil speciels
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Sense of place entanglements
Berlin attic, underwater oil well, living reefs, so cal and berlin
Both dark and cold
Acoustical architectural imageingins
Projection footage from that reef onto berlin artic
Since the 19602 oil wells drilled off socal, turned into living reefs, spongers, anenomes, rockfish, sculpin,
Entangled senses of place (and time)
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Sea caves s of la
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ollowing a musician, a poet, a writer, and a filmmaker who are each embracing the alchemical power of story to connect and transform us, this series opens ways of being that hold both catastrophe and love as our landscapes change and disappear.
//musicians and audience free roaming, alwasy moving around, ie see gill valves essay, the viewer transmogrifies into performer via their movmeents (ie shadows on projections, movemetns aroudn geophone) /via their movments as sonified via geophonic technology. interactive opera bc the percussion is our footsepts/
geohphen puts finger on pulse of buildng/ la
geophone—allows us to hear low frequenceis, make audible the inaudible
Funding Credit: LA County Department of Arts and Culture
Credit/Recognition. Grantees are required to acknowledge the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and Arts and Culture on all materials, websites, publications, flyers, marketing materials and announcements (printed or digital) for organizations, projects, programs, or materials funded through the Organizational Grant Program. This is completed through:
(1) Placement of the Department of Arts and Culture logo; and
(2) Use of the following credit line: "This [ORGANIZATION / PROJECT / PROGRAM / PERFORMANCE / EXHIBITION] is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture."
The Arts and Culture logos can be downloaded here. In addition to the logo and credit line, any printed list of contributors to an organization or program funded by this grant should include the “Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture”. Grantees are also encouraged to use the Department of Arts and Culture's handles and hashtags when posting on digital and social media about receiving this OGP grant and any activities supported by the OGP program: @LACountyArts #LACountyArts.
21? musicians, sound artists and vocalists
musicians, performers primarily queer ensemble
Life Cycle of a Fever Dream: A Feral Opera
Life Cycle of a Fever Dream is an experimental, interactive, and site-specific opera featuring whale sharks and silk moths, golden-headed lion tamarins and desert ants, bristlecone pines and dinoflagellates, string sections and brass sections, countertenors and altos. the performance invites us to explore entanglements among humans and more-than-humans, phenomena and sound, bringing living fossils like hagfish, sturgeon and Przewalksi’s horses into conversation with sea caves and climatic phenomena, beetles and bats, sea stars and cicadas. Julia Edith Rigby will be performing live on viola and piano in conversation with sixteen other musicians, sound artists and vocalists. Life Cycle of a Fever Dream will experiment with geophone technology to temporarily transform the roof of the Bendix Building into a community-activated instrument. This immersive, interactive experience will explore collaboration and interdependence with soniferous animals and environments, imagining futurities which complexify our understandings of sensory worlds and sense of place, loss and possibility.
immmersive, interactive opera (ie via geophone)
pop chamber meets brass-heavy orchestra meets opera
pop chamber meets brass flash orchestra meets fish-forward opera
brass flash
only brass strings and vocals, orchestra stripped down
got operatic, chamber elements, pop chamber
Guest Creative Director Fahad Siadat weaves hypnotic vocal loops and saturated electronic drones.
brass flash, string harmonics
vocals share operatic and choral elements, also tsa
The visuals will express a confluence of climate grief, climate anxiety, wonder and kinship.
credit: bodega marine lab
cabrillo aquarium
Project supported by culture hub, fca grant, Heidi duckler dance
Acknowledgment of Funding: Since the LA County Department of Arts and Culture is funding the salon, we need to acknowledge them in all promotional materials and tag them on social media.
qanun, accordian, contra tenor, x (what is leora, a soprano?), trumpet, horn, viola, cello, violins,
The project will hybridize multi-channel projection mapping and live instrumentation to explore the site, its history and local / global human / more-than-human relationships. The opera will feature whale sharks and silk moths, golden-headed lion tamarins and desert ants, bristlecone pines and dinoflagellates, inviting us to explore entanglements among humans and more-than-humans, phenomena and sound, bringing living fossils like hagfish and Przewalksi’s horses into conversation with sea caves and elderflorae, beetles and bats, church bells and pipe organs, brass and string sections. The project explores collaboration, cohabitation and interdependence with soniferous animals and environments to imagine futurities which complexify our understandings of sensory worlds and sense of place, loss and possibility. In addition to three opera singers, sixteen performers will be playing brass, strings, accordion and Qanun.
the project transforms the bendix building into an instrument via geophone technogloy ,which people are invited to interact with. thsi is a community-activated opera
"Life Cycle of a Fever Dream" is the audio score for my upcoming opera which will premiere on November 16 on the roof of the Bendix Building in Los Angeles. The score is designed for sixteen musicians on brass, strings, piano, accordion, and qanun, as well as one countertenor and one soprano. The score incorporates field recordings from meeting with wild animals and soniferous bodies like sea caves and ancient bristlecone pine trees. Sourcing field recordings from sea caves, atmospheric river events, decomposing trees, aquaria, animals and climatic phenomena, the opera expands our human-centered understanding of perception / world-making to consider the sensory worlds of more-than-humans. Wild bats and beetles, sea lions and tortoises, coyotes and hagfish, cicadas and cormorants, marine isopods and bees are among the many animals voicing the score. Piano, viola and pipe organ pieces are arranged with recordings of ant nests and frogs, welded sousaphones and sea storms. Lush jungle bird songs dialogue with cathedral organ drones.
ber on the roof of the historic Bendix Building in Los Angeles, California. The opera will use sound sculpture to transform the building itself into an instrument. Viewers / listeners will be invited to interact with and cocreate the work, to become performers by means of their movements and interaction with this sound sculpture.
https://emergencemagazine.org/
collective perfomrance, commonage,
Insect recordings paired w ocean scenes; inscet health and ocean health, connections, local and global
life cycle of a fever dream
a feral opera
an experimental, community-activated perforamce
experimental performance
experimental opera
film by ring road
Geophonic readings of our collectivLife Cycle of a Fever Dream will happen on the roof, during the sunset/full moon rise on the roof.
Duration: 45-60 minutes. The studio exterior wall will be lit with moving imagery via projection-mapped video. Julia is on viola and piano, playing original composition written for specifically for this site, the roof of the Bendix Building. Twenty-ish string players are standing all around, playing variations on the score. We will all be playing acoustically. field reocrings of animals, local sea caves etc will be playing and crosspollinating w our live instrumentation and the street sounds. live free improv and scored instrumentation mixed w edited amplified audio as well as street audio, bird audio, interspecies music making.
A geophone (https://store.lom.audio/products/geofon?variant=29549909442647) is temporarily anchored to the roof and run through an amp. The geophone is playing back the sounds of the building and the visitors' interactions with this building / the building as a living, breathing instrument. Viewers/listeners are moving through the space and co-creating the soundscape and view-scape via their movements (as picked up by the geophone) and shadows interacting with the projected video. The score is ever-evolving in collaboration with the audiences' movements and actions, sort of like a live, ephemeral soundtrack for the video. also the live audio from the street is crosspollkinateing w our audio (ie see what i wrote for sea cave transmogrification iv) The video brings global themes of sense of place, sounding and listening, human/more-than-human relationships in conversation with local themes of sense of place (ie this very roof we are all existing on in this moment). e momvemtns are played back, feedback loop, ephermaerla and ever evolving collective collaborative unscored score
Have the base come from the building itself (ie peoples footprints), a geophone is a sensitive omnidirectional geophone adjusted for field recording purposes. Originally designed for seismic measurements, it can be used with regular field recording equipment to capture very faint vibrations in various materials and even soil. geophone pciks up the vibrations we make w every step. listen to the vibrational landscape of the bendix building, building as an instrument that is activated by the community (ie via our footsteps).
Five knee-level brass lamps will be spaced around the roof for some quiet amber lighting.
Many thanks to Heidi duckler dance and culture hub for supporting this project.
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Stranger Love is a 6-hour-long multimedia opera, scored for 28 musicians (including three microtonal pianos), 8 singers, and 6 dancers. An immersive experience, Stranger Love is a grand celebration of being alive, evoking the visceral thrill of a gospel revival, the ethereal calm of watching snow fall, the wonder of staring into the night sky.
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Bendix writeup:
Site specific w using bldg. as instruemtn
Site specific, bldg. as instrument (ie via contact mics, transdcuers, xyz),facilitating new wasy to listen, ie bone conduction, new wasy of perceiving, mic feeds the audience sounds, via movmennt and sounding the audience becomes performer, catalyzes transforms tramsnogrifeis into performer, so its interactive, improvisational, ephemeral, community activated performance. Operatic. Site responsive. Local and global thinking (this site/oceans) in relationship w one another, sonically. Acoustical architrecute. Also architrecute and projection (ie mapping to the art deco arches, windows etc) , also ! his of Bendix building, archit history and acoustical architecture, arhitcetural resonance,
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Life Cycle of a Fever Dream is an interactive, experimental opera featuring whale sharks and silk moths, golden-headed lion tamarins and desert ants, bristlecone pines and dinoflagellates, string sections and brass sections, countertenors and altos. The performance invites us to explore entanglements among humans and more-than-humans, phenomena and sound, bringing living fossils like hagfish and Przewalksi’s horses into conversation with sea caves and climatic phenomena, beetles and bats, sea stars and cicadas. I will be performing live on viola in conversation with thirteen other musicians and vocalists.
Life Cycle of a Fever Dream will experiment with geophone technology to temporarily transform the Vault Theater into a community-activated instrument, whereby viewers / listeners become performers via their movements in the space. The geophone (a specialized microphone initially designed to listen to seismic vibrations) is capable of picking up the smallest movements in the theatre and transmogrifiying those movements into resonant, rumbling audio. This ephemeral, accidental, improvisational audio will comprise the percussive elements of the opera. Unlike a more traditional concert, this performance will transform viewers / listeners from passive observers to active performers. We will work with the available Meyer Sound System for this element, using the available speakers and the subwoofer to amplify the sounds captured by the geophone.
Field recordings from meetings with animals will be woven into the live audio. I will be projecting a large, immersive video art piece in conversation with the musical score. The moving imagery will be comprised of my video documentation and video art featuring human / more-than-human interactions and relationships, on local and global scales. Insects, megafauna, microfauna, fungi and oceanic worlds will permeate the visuals in lush, vibrant, hyper-chromatic chaos. The visuals will express a confluence of climate grief, climate anxiety, wonder and kinship. The project will ask questions about radical noticing, deep-imagining, regenerative worldmaking, listening / sounding as social practice, shifting seascapes, multispecies relationships and sensory ecology.
With support from the budget, I would like to hire four brass players, five string players, one pianist and three opera singers (a countertenor, an alto and a bass). I myself will be playing viola. Together we will create a unique twist on a contemporary orchestra, pushing into experimental realms heavy in brass and strings and devoid entirely of woodwinds. The brass-heavy elements will lend extra acoustical flash and pop. I want to create a rogue sonic experience where brass and strings play heavy on our ears and hearts, laying a tumultuous ground for feral vocal experimentation. Of course there will be calm moments in the score as well, and for these moments the brass and strings lend a different quality of warmth, color and emotion than possible with woodwind inclusion. The sonic signature of these two instrument families combined is volatile and unique, perhaps because one family relies so much on lung power and the other on resonance.
Life Cycle of a Fever Dream will explore relationships among resonance and vibration, climate crises and humanities, rupture and repair, degeneration and regeneration. What is the connection between the history of a site like the Vault Theater and its resonance, its acoustical signature? Between ecological, material and sonic decay? Can finding new ways to listen to and think about a site or object’s resonance (in this case, via geophonic technology) catalyze new ways of thinking about more-than-human timescales or even accelerating geological timescales? What can we collectively learn about our rapidly changing world by finding new ways to experience listening? Can sound art help us ask new questions about a site and its history, about relationships with other living things, with the world?
Life Cycle of a Fever Dream will manifest as an immersive, interactive experience will explore collaboration and interdependence with soniferous animals and environments, imagining futurities which complexify our understandings of sensory worlds and sense of place, loss and possibility.
I am performing a much smaller version of this opera on November 16, 2024 on the roof of the Bendix Building in Los Angeles. With support from Third Angle New Music, I would be able to scale this score and performance into a full-length, experimental and interactive opera. I have included a portion of the score as one of my work samples to give reviewers a sense of the musical journey this opera will follow.
Regarding show timing, I am flexible with dates.
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Description of Performance
Life Cycle of a Fever Dream is an experimental opera featuring whale sharks and silk
moths, golden-headed lion tamarins and desert ants, bristlecone pines and
dinoflagellates, string sections and brass sections, countertenors and sopranos. The
performance invites us to explore entanglements among humans and more-than-
humans, phenomena and sound, bringing living fossils like hagfish and Przewalksi’s
horses into conversation with sea caves and climatic phenomena, beetles and bats, sea
stars and cicadas. Julia Edith Rigby will be performing live on viola and piano in
conversation with sixteen other musicians, sound artists and vocalists. Life Cycle of a
Fever Dream will experiment with geophone technology to temporarily transform the
roof of the Bendix Building into a community-activated instrument. This immersive,
interactive experience will explore collaboration and interdependence with soniferous
animals and environments, imagining futurities which complexify our understandings
of sensory worlds and sense of place, loss and possibility.
45 minutes long
Artist Bio
Julia Edith Rigby has performed at / composed for LEAF Festival in Lafayette, Colorado
(2024), LOW End in Omaha, Nebraska (2023), the Toulouse Theater in New Orleans
(2023), SAPPYFEST in New Brunswick (2024) and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in
New Smyrna, Florida (2023). She is a recipient of artist grants from Arts New
Brunswick, the Center for Cultural Innovation and the U.S. Department of State’s
Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Rigby was the Sound Art + Experimental
Music Fellow at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska in fall
2023. She has been an artist in residence at GlougauAIR Artist Residency in Berlin,
PLAYA Summer Lake, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Kala Art Institute, and others.
Rigby has exhibited work in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Berlin. Rigby
received her MFA in Studio Art at the University of California, Davis (2020).
Extended Performance Description
Life Cycle of a Fever Dream will happen on the roof, during the sunset / full moon rise.
Duration: 45 minutes. The studio exterior wall will be lit with moving imagery via projection-mapped video. Julia will be on viola and piano, playing original composition written specifically for this site. There will be fifteen musicians (string and brass) two / three opera singers and one sound artist (Ben Kingsley https://benkinsley.com/) working with the geophone.
We will all be playing acoustically.
Field recordings from meetings with various animals will be playing from a speaker and mixing with our live instrumentation.
A geophone will be temporarily anchored to the roof and run through an amp. The geophone will be playing back the sounds of the building and the visitors' interactions with this building. Viewers / listeners moving through the space will be co-creating the soundscape and view-scape via their movements (as picked up by the geophone) and shadows interacting with the projected video. In this sense, the project will become a community-activated performance, in which the building itself becomes an instrument.
The video will bring global themes of sense of place, sounding and listening, human / more-than-human relationships in conversation with local themes of sense of place (this very roof we are all existing on in this moment).
Five knee-level brass lamps will be spaced around the roof for some quiet amber lighting.