14.2 Final Project: Dance + Community + Sound

For my final project I wanted to look at how movement and sound are naturally generated in a community setting. However, as I thought more about this idea I became aware of the inherent pressures associated with acting in certain social settings. What is the appropriate way to speak to others within a given context? What expectations need to be met? I thought specifically of celebrations and how they are a particular phenomenon that provides a set duration of time in which individuals who know the host, but maybe not each other, are positioned within the same space in order to interact with each other. Attendance at a celebration, while often pleasant, can give rise to a range of feelings within individuals from excitement to anxiety to exhilaration to exhaustion.

Additionally, I wanted to take a stark look at the unnatural nature of the celebration and how it puts on display one of our most human characteristics: how we interact with others when we must. In order to address various levels of comfort and discomfort, similar to that at a social gathering, class members were given invitations that were privately delivered. Each invitation contained a specific sound-creating action and a period of time in which the action should be repeated. Participants were not forced to partake, however they were invited to.

A selection of the invitations given.

Once given their invitations, as the host I reminded participants of their role and invited them to begin. Acting somewhat as a subconscious metronome, I said hello every second. Once a minute of the activity had passed, I thanked the participants for coming and wished them a good evening.

The activity was largely successful, however I wish there was a way to have communicated to participants to stand or move about in order to enhance the "milling about" that comes at a social gathering. I did not want to expressly tell them to do so, but I attempted to change the location by giving the invites in the attached gallery of the Myers Media Art Studio, however I did not anticipate that participants would sit following receipt of their invitation. If I were to do this again, I would give each person a movement task in addition to their sound.