Audioswarm

In the summer of 2008, I took part in the Harold Arts Intensive Residency where a group of visual artists and musicians came together to create art at a tree farm in rural Chesterhill, Ohio. During my two weeks at the residency I noticed that, even with the scarcity of electricity and the lack of Internet access, most of the resident artists at the farm had Apple laptops with them. With this technical restriction and several conversations about emergence in mind, I devised a plan for an collaborative performance wherein one musician would play an improvised piece on a keyboard while a "swarm" of other artists would manipulate, enhance and distort the audio in real time. I created the necessary software and the performance took place late at night in a nearby abandoned church, illuminated only by the eleven laptop screens and the eleven-channel musical creation.

The insect image was inspired by the performance and was printed in a 24-hour zine produced by Harold Arts and Encyclopedia Destructica.

Thanks to Harold Arts, Jason Ajemian and the swarm: Sy Bar-Sheshet, Elizabeth Chodos, Melissa Damasauskas, Lesley Flanigan, John Glover, Emily Green, Joe Jeffers, Maya Jensen, Tristan Perich, Nicholas Wylie