JESSICA THOMPSON
mobile performance device
Date: Friday 9.18
Start Time: 12:00pm
Location: Commons gallery, Barney building
mobile performance device is a flexible broadcast unit designed to facilitate performative situations in public spaces. The project consists of four umbrellas that generate and broadcast sound in response to architectural, electromagnetic and social stimuli.
Each umbrella contains a simple analogue oscillator that calibrates to body capacitance. The piece generates sound in response to its proximity to other performers, members of the public and electromagnetic frequencies such as power lines, wifi networks, and cell phone towers.
The mobile performance device transforms ordinary experience into a performative situation that places the user in a space that is both cinematic and fantastic and transforms the urban environment into a fluid interface of shifting sonic potentialities. The embodied actions of the user, which both contributes to and interrupts the acoustic ecology of the space, becomes a form of drawing.
During the festival, audience members will be receive a set of directions to a location outside of Conflux Headquarters where they will be invited to participate in one of two parallel performances that use the devices as a starting point.
Jessica Thompson is a new media artist whose projects explore social interactions within public space through sound, performance and mobile technologies. Her sound pieces create collaborative situations with audiences, where the integrity of the artwork is determined by willing participants.
Her projects have been shown in exhibitions and festivals such as ARCO, (Madrid) MACO, (Mexico City) dp003, (Dundee, Scotland) ISEA 2006, (San Jose, CA) the Conflux Festival, (New York), Thinking Metropolis, (Copenhagen) InterAccess Artist Run Centre, (Toronto) Video Pool, (Winnipeg) and most recently at the Deep Wireless Festival of Radio and Transmission Art. (Toronto) She lives and works between Toronto, Canada and Buffalo, New York. Her work is represented by p|m Gallery in Toronto, Canada.
