‘Music for Hoarders’
By Dawn Kasper

Objective:

To create an environment or situation that emulates the physical sensory experience for interpretation of ones hoarding of emotions.

Description:

Music for Hoarders is a ‘visual poem’ performance action in which I collaborate with a group of musicians to create a structured experimental music composition to invoke the feeling of hoarding human emotions. The music will accompany my performative actions as well as assist in activating my personal movements during the duration of the performance.

My personal actions will be to interact with found everyday objects already installed in the middle of the gallery space. I will spontaneously move objects around the room. Improvised musical interpretations of everyday objects (consider synesthesia) are the inspiration of each individual musician.

The musicians are to play a repetitive sound or improvised score whenever I touch or interact with an object, for the duration of my interaction with that object. Each individual musician will pick an object to emulate and interpret. Examples; percussion for a chair, guitar for a glass, synth for a pile of newspapers, a violin for a table. The structure is loose, but each object MUST have a sound related to it and that sound MUST be performed only when I come in direct contact with that related object. Each musician may have more then one object to perform as.

The idea is to hoard the sound. The hoarding of sound directly emulates the hoarding of emotions.

Key words:

hoarding, experimental music, improvisation, aleatoricism, synesthesia, John Cage, Alison Knowles “Shoestring Song”, Fluxus, graphical notation

Duration:

45 minutes to 2 hours

Number of Performers:

10 people. Ideal situation 13

Materials / Instrumentation / Performers:

furniture, boxes, magazines, newspapers, a variety of found or acquired household objects, various instruments provided by the performers, Devin McNulty, Eric Kim, Giles Miller, Kathleen Kim, Laura Steenberge, Daniela Sea, Jen Smith, Yasmine Kittles, Math Bass, Daniel Brummel, Larissa Brantner James, Jason Yates, Aerial Pink, Geneva Jacuzzi, Simon Haas, Nikolai Haas, Steven Synstelien, William Kai Stangeland-Menchaca, and more …

Score / Notes:

Ideal situation would be to have the 18 performers listed above. As little as 6 to 10 will work. What does it mean to hoard emotions? What does it mean to hoard sound?

When and Where:

September 2nd to September 9th 2010 is the total duration of the time I have in the space. Saturday the 9th of September at 8pm 2010. The performance will take place in the South Gallery of Honor Fraser Gallery in Culver City.

Related Links:

blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/picturesofmusic/index2.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synethesia
blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/picturesofmusic/index2.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_notation
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers