WAV_LENGTH_01
by Temporary Distortion
Work-in-Progress Performance by followed by Artist Talk & Conference
July 21, 4:00pm
Torn Space Theater – 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo, NY 14212
Free, but registration required
WAV_LENGTH_01 is the first in a series of media art performances having to do with wavelengths of light and sound. Each performance in the series will serve as a monochromatic meditation on the human experience of a single color in the visible spectrum and a corresponding parallel sound. The series borrows structural elements and narrative resonance from Michael Snow’s 1967 experimental film, Wavelength, which Artforum hailed as “probably the most rigorously composed movie in existence.” Snow’s 45-minute slow zoom on an empty room, punctuated by four fleeting “human events,” provides an anti-narrative blueprint that interrogates the possibility of reframing spectatorship as a consciousness-altering exercise. Through this intricate framework, the WAV_LENGTH series will delve into the profound connections between sensory perception and emotional resonance, inviting audiences to immerse themselves in rich, monochromatic worlds where sight, sound and story have the potential to both converge or refract into individual wavelengths.
WAV_LENGTH_01 is focused on red—thought to be the first color a newborn can discern, the last color we see before dying, and the first color to be named by primitive cultures all over the world. Each project in the series will survey the history, cultural coding, and sensual impact of a single hue, in order to explore how color resides not in light or material, but in the expansive variety of embodied observations made by the viewer. Color perception will be shown to be a complicated phenomenon that is relative, interdependent, and constantly in flux—interpreted by a perceiving body that is socially coded, individual, and unavoidably rife with history. The series as a whole will be used as a prism to perform an extended meditation on the contingent nature of color perception, or what Josef Albers called “the most relative medium in art.”
Artist Talk & Conference
Following WAV_LENGTH_01 there will be an interactive public discussion on Digital Arts and Technology in Performance with Sarah Bay-Cheng (Dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design at York University), Dan Shanahan (Artistic Director of Torn Space Theater, Melissa Meola (Associate Director of Torn Space Theater), Frank Napolski (lighting designer, Groupwork co-founder) and Kenneth Collins/John Sully (Temporary Distortion).
This conversation will focus on some of the current experiments in live performance and digital media that will shape the future of contemporary theater. In addition to the use of digital media in the theater, we will discuss how AI, algorithms, and bleeding-edge digital technologies have the potential to impact the arts, pushing the boundaries of creativity, and offering new possibilities for storytelling. This event will bring together artists, academics, and audiences for a joint discussion to explore what lies ahead for digital technologies in the theatrical landscape.