Sound Machine Project

It was clear to me the moment I read the assignment that at least one of my machine "parts" would have to be a person, since I am less than capable of building a true machine. However, I wanted some nonliving parts, so I scouted the school for whatever items I could find, picking up odd hairbands and teabags off the ground. Eventually, I devised my process. I would start the machine by firing a headband into Person A, who would spill his cup of water and use the water to push a plastic bag towards Person B, who would pick it up and inflate it. I considered having the bag popped to create a noise, but that seemed a bit obvious. Instead, written on the bag was "CALL ME" with an arrow pointing back to Person A, who would call Person B, and both would hold their phones out to the audience. I wanted to subvert the assignment a bit and make the audience wait for a sound, which wouldn't in fact arrive until they created it, as the final sound would be their clapping echoed through the phones. This appealed to me because the back and forth of the sound would create a slight dissonance. Once again I think of John Cage's radio piece. Furthermore, trying to make the audience a part of the show was what many of the people we've studied in various movements tried to do. A more extreme example is the guy masturbating under the stage and speaking to the audience members as they mounted it. Mine probably could have used a little more masturbation, but still, similar idea. I was also inspired by the one in-class Fluxus Project (don't know who wrote it, but Nate Berry performed it), having the class stand on one leg and giving no further instructions, waiting to see how long it would take for them to notice. I also wondered how long it would take the audience to realize that there was nothing left except themselves. They caught on pretty quickly.

Fluxus Project

I was disappointed to see none of the cards I wrote performed. Two of them I made intentionally vague: "show yourself the way others see you" and "show a smaller, meaker force overcoming a larger, small force." I wrote these with absolutely no idea how in the hell they could be physically conveyed, and wanted to watch other people struggle to do so. I admit it was a bit sadistic of me, writing such purposefully impenetrable cards. Maybe that's why they weren't picked. I shouldn't have been that vague. My other card said "play your iPod on shuffle and simultaneously sing the first song that comes to your head." Part of this was just curiosity of what kind of music was on people's iPods and minds, but also, in retrospect, this was inspired by John Cage's radio pieces. The idea of pre-existing music clashing in potentially dissonant ways has intrigued both John and myself.