Ecstasies of Rooms
Collaboration with Christine Cornwell, commissioned by Screen Dive for Gaudeamus Music Week Festival 2020
Access it here: https://gaudeamusscreendive.com/ecstasies/
Participatory digital performance , 45 minute guided audio score and virtual 3D room with spatialised vocal sounds from participants
This piece was developed remotely over the summer of 2020 and presented digitally at the Gaudeamus Muziekweek festival in the Netherlands in September 2020. In form it had several elements to it: 1. A 45-minute audio score that guided participants to use their voice and senses to create an encounter with their own living room. 2. An in-browser phone app that played the audio score and recorded audio responses from participants. 3. An online audio-visual 3D space in which audio responses collected from participants were uploaded and spatialized in real-time during the week of the festival.
The audio score contains four invitations to action. The first one guides participants to fill the ceiling and floor of their room with sound. They then get down to the ground and vocalize the feel of their carpet using touch. The third action invites them to smell an object and allow themselves to be moved into sonic action by the sensation and the final aims to create a vocal dance with the light that’s touching their skin. If the participants recorded their responses (an option they have for each individual action), their vocal utterances are sent to populate the virtual space, which is publicly available on the Gaudeamus website. This 3D space aims to present a world of anonymized intimate utterances – a place of collectivity and kinship that reflects the impossibility of togetherness during the pandemic.
