FACET
an audiovisual projection for attention
A 5-minutes Sample of what FACET could look like. Full 35 minute proof of concept performance at bottom.
FACET will be a multimedia improvisation of found sound and video seeking meaning in the cacophony of curated reality - a reality often rooted in the images broadcast to bring us into moments of "news" and "happening" alongside music, the sounds and rhythms we listen to in real time to experience and explore our affinities within the wide ranges of culture. johnson will improvise an audio/visual composition drawing from a prepared crate of 100 records spanning genre and time interacting with a live mix of clips from news and live broadcast recordings. With the tools of three turntables, a short throw projector, and projection mapping software supporting live manipulation of in-program audio-linked effects, johnson will create a spatial setting for the eye and ear to move within, ones attention splitting and converging as media is unveiled and concealed. This prospective project builds on past work developed in the SUBMIND and Mr. Muddle projects. When funding is secured, this prospective idea will begin development with the collaboration of Monique Davis to facilitate gathering audience experience data, Kira Cummings to film performances for content and stage setting studies, and Walter Young to conduct analog audience input activities with an eye toward potential digital interactives in the future.
The experience of this performance will be intended to amplify the agency of the observer as a human wrestling back their own attention and focus within a fractured and nonstop media environment. While most experience acculturates viewers to perceive passively, FACET transforms this normally highly curated material, into a wilderness of converging and diverging streams of music and video generating fertile ground for free association and an impetus to take control of one's focus and make decisions about what one will and won't take in. In order to capture a sample of this idea for funding documentation, a draft performance was mounted one evening at The Mosquito in Jackson, MS. During the response session, audience members spoke of "holding on" to melodies they can recognize, of a disorientation when suddenly what seemed to be "one thing splits apart," and of the surrealness of "intentionally taking it all in as one thing, a gestalt." Audience feedback also highlighted how the experience led them to reflect on the different ways that news and production media control and manipulate the meaning of what we are seemingly seeing with our own eyes but which is clearly highly curated. There is a deconstruction and reconstruction, ebbing and flowing within FACET which seems to heighten our sensitivities to being a viewer, and our agency to actively participate in what we are perceiving.
This one proof of concept performance was exciting. Applications have been submitted and once received this new work will begin to be developed and produced.
daniel@significantdevelopments.us — Jackson, Mississippi