I’m presenting a new video installation at the Creativity & Cognition 09 conference at the Berkeley Art Museum. The theme is ‘Everyday Creativity’ which happens to fit my piece perfectly! I’ve always wanted to do something here, so it’s a homecoming of sorts.

LE:60 Film Festival

Two hand-made jackets wired with electronics, forming mobile sound samplers. The wearer circulates throughout the city, collecting sounds. The audio samples are continuously remixed into a rhythmic musical collage that accompanies their explorations. At any point in their journey, the wearer may add a new sound to the composition, which they are encouraged to do by interacting with other humans and by recording sounds specific to their current locale. On conclusion of the nomadic sound collecting journey, the sounds can be downloaded into a cumulative collection database.

This piece re-imagines/re-wires clothing for a globalized, media-saturated era.  It situates the wearer as a sonic hunter/gatherer, exploring and documenting the sonic landscape of the postmodern city.

The autonomous machine embedded in the jackets amplifies the contemporary trends of ubiquitous, wearable electronic devices that constantly reassure us with their chattering voices, and, like John Cage’s compositions, seeks to recognize music in the sounds of everyday life. It weaves together sonic fragments of a multiplicity of voices and localities into a perpetually-remixed soundtrack to accompany the wearer’s journeys into public space.

The jackets themselves represent a trans-global remix of textile traditions, incorporating shibori and other Asian, African, and American techniques, as well as found and recycled materials. Brightly-colored and richly textured, they invite curiosity from spectators and encourage interaction with the wearer.

The Sound Parasites returned in a 2nd iteration for an international audience when I was invited to participate in the Digital Art Weeks festival organized by Eldgenössiche Techniche Hochschule Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich).

After presenting my research on self-contained digital sound modules at the conference portion, I fulfilled a lifelong dream by performing with the Parasites at the legendary Cabaret Voltaire, birthplace of the Dada art movement and still an exciting venue for avant-garde art. I was part of a ‘wired freak show’ with an international cast of performers who mixed technology with provocation and humor.

When I was in Oaxaco I was fortunate to meet Viktor Diaz and the Bemba Klan at the Estudio Cruz de Piedra gallery. They invited me to make a piece for one of their stencil shows, and I got to work and exhibit alongside many of the best young street artists in Oaxaca. I created this piece that expressed ironically my role as an outsider and satirized the many foreign tourists who throng the city.
A year later, during the people’s resistance movement that exploded in Oaxaca in response to brutal suppression of a teacher’s strike, the public artwork created by these stencil artists became one of the most visible manifestations of the struggle. I am honored to have shared a (quieter) moment of cultural exchange with them.