Category Archives: Performance

Art is _______ : Remixing Artist’s Words to Create New Definitions of Art

By adam | Published: March 10, 2010

WE ARE SCIENCE! collaborated with the Pink Line Project to create an interactive experience for the Phillips Collection’s “This is not That” cafe. We took 12 artists from the collection, sampled their statements about art, and broke them down into cards that participants could use to remix their own statements, filling in the blank in “Art is _____”. I was struck by how engaged people were in the experience, and how the simplicity and playfulness of the concept opened up remarkable creativity.

Check out the video to see what I mean:

Also posted in Remixes, Video | Leave a comment

Ignite DC Talk – Becoming a DJ of Thought

By admin | Published: January 28, 2010

Video from my talk at Ignite DC #2, titled “Becoming a DJ of Thought.” More description below the video.


Or, download it at iTunes

Description:
Remixing is not just an art form: it is a fundamental method for understanding and interacting with what we know. We’ve realized the potential of remixing in music, literature, and art—we must now remix the entire spectrum of human thought. If we can remix songs, why not the encyclopedia? If we can mash-up Jay-Z and the Beatles, why not Einstein and Darwin, the Bible and Pythagoras, Isaac Newton and Lewis Carroll? Remixing “the stuff of thought” will yield not only compelling art, but, with the right understanding and appreciation, real insight and scientific advancement. The innovators of the future will be “DJs of Thought,” sampling, mixing, and spinning all existing ideas and thought-objects into ever-new structures. They will remix what we know into what we could know. They will show the Academy how to dance.

Also posted in Lectures, Remixes, Video | 1 Comment

Performing at the Phillips Collection on Thursday

By adam | Published: August 3, 2009

Please join me this Thursday as I channel the spirit of Denis Diderot, the inventor of the Encyclopedia, to present a new, fluid, organic structure for creating, capturing and conveying knowledge.

As part of the Phillip’s Collection THIS IS NOT THAT CAFÉ interactive group performance, A Play, I will be playing the role of Taxonomer, organizing the café’s library according to an improvisatory, recombinant, open (crowd)sourced method for the production of new concepts and categorizations. It will be ambitious and awesome, and audience members will have the opportunity to participate.

You will also see live re-enactments from some of your favorite artists, including Degas, Manet, and Duchamp.

There will also be food and drink, and most likely, merriment.

Hope to see you all there!

Thursday, August 6
6-8:30 pm (you can come at any time, for any amount of time)
FREE!
at the Phillips Collection
1600 21 St NW | Washington, DC | 20009

Find out more about the excellent new space at the Phillips Collection, THIS IS NOT THAT CAFÉ:
www.thisisnotthatcafe.com

Also posted in Announcements | Leave a comment

Working notes for the first WE ARE SCIENCE! Lab

By adam | Published: June 28, 2009

another axis of connection
saying I told you
about performance
to take a picture of each
channel, to tell a story
to an idea, a deliberate
integration into what
readies a structure
and releases
thoughts to be
nothing but focus
a sort of mirroring
in the organic local flow
a field of
allowing it
to vary within attention
the intersection
of the shadows
it casts
over time
to modulate a little more
beyond form
to go forward with it
beyond
some sort
of pattern.
of story and texture
an interrupted self-
similarity
continuing to record
the interaction
about what is being
currently recorded
no story behind it
being this breathing
out there
a song from some
sense of a body
a point of
the wave of
some visions of it
a fluid core or cord or chord
a landscape
a fractal experience

[with Jon Lee, fragments of our planning conversation for the first WE ARE SCIENCE! Lab]

Also posted in In Process | 1 Comment

I Know Where We Are, an Interface in Three Movements, with Kate Porter (February 23, 2007)

By adam | Published: April 22, 2009

This is the score and notes from an improvisational performance I did with cellist Kate Porter at the Shattered Wig, Baltimore, 2/23/2007.

“I Know Where We Are: An Interface in Three Movements”


Created with flickr slideshow.

For this performance, I initially created as many “notes” as I could, as quickly as possible, pulling fragments from my various writings, sound pieces, background music, and other environmental variables, recording them all in a huge Word document. The intent was to capture small, lightweight pieces of thought and experience that would lend themselves well to being notes in the improvisation, in the dual sense of musical notes and linguistic notes.

I then brought a huge stack of these notes to a rehearsal with Kate. We poured over them, dividing them into the three movements of the piece, sketching on them, and generally teasing out the possibles.
Read More »

Posted in Performance | 1 Comment

Heraclitus Poetic Necromancy (w/ M. Magnus) (June 6, 2007)

By adam | Published: April 22, 2009

These are the working notes for an interactive performance ritual to summon the spirit of Heraclitus, conducted in June of 2007. The ritual was developed by M. Magnus and myself, based on his text “On Heraclitean Pride.”


Created with flickr slideshow.

The performance followed an actual ritual format, beginning with a circle creation and summoning, followed by the requisite banishings (throwing salt around the room), divine laughter (led by M’s daughter, Hero), invocation (singing a recombinant hymn together), and consecration. While we’re not sure if the summoning was a complete success, we believe that Heraclitus, the source of so much awareness of flux, chaos, and change, would have been proud.

The ritual was conducted as part of the excellent i.e. reading series at Dionysus restaurant, to an amused (bemused?) mix of folks coming to the reading and folks who just happened to be sitting down to dinner.

More M. Magnus (or, MMM)
Verb Sap, published by Narrow House
Video of performance with the Splash Ensemble

Also posted in Diagrams | Leave a comment

Score for Environmental Interactions (May 5, 2007)

By adam | Published: April 20, 2009

This is the “Score for Environmental Interactions”; an interactive performance piece I did for the Yockadot! Poetics Theatre Festival in Alexandria, VA

The performance was a “guided tour” of the USPTO building where the last day of the festival was being held.

Score for Environmental Interactions, Side 1

The participants were given the score and a sheet torn at random from a dictionary. We then toured the building, describing it using the language on our pages, improvising a new reality out of the mix of the dictionary and our own creative impulses.

View the back side of the Score, containing great pseudo-mathematic equations like “Always (divided by) Whatever”, after the jump Read More »

Also posted in Diagrams | Leave a comment

WE ARE SCIENCE! – April 19th, 3pm

By adam | Published: April 15, 2009

Come see me drop some improvised knowledge with Jon Lee in WE ARE SCIENCE!

Sunday, April 19th, 3pm @ DCAC, Washington, DC- more info

Together, we will discover amazing things.

Such as: we are event #666 at dcpoetry.com. Which is just AWESOME.

A google image search of “event #666″ brings up this:

WE ARE SCIENCE vs EVENT 666

WE ARE SCIENCE vs EVENT 666

I believe you can see Jon and I if you look real close.

Also posted in Announcements | Leave a comment

The Fire Works Magic, at Transmodern Festival

By adam | Published: April 6, 2009

Pictures from my performance at the Transmodern Festival in Baltimore. For the performance, I set up shop in the stairwell, diagramming and writing improvised ideas, quotations, and stories based on interactions with people passing by.

Check them out, yo


Created with flickr slideshow.

Also, check out The Transmodern Photo Pool for more awesome.

Posted in Performance | Leave a comment

Lecture 2 – Intro Slide

By adam | Published: June 30, 2008

Intro slide to Lecture 2 – What We Think When We Think About Thought

As far as I can tell, here’s what’s happening:

  • A primary user (left) access a thought-object (center) that is connected to a portable medium (top).
  • Collective knowledge of the thought-object, combined with perceptions of the primary user’s use of it, flows back and forth between observers (bottom) and the thought-object. This changes it.
  • The thought-object, combining the inputs and manipulations of the primary user, portable medium, and observers, projects an image onto a screen (right) …

Scene_Intro

  • The primary user and observers now have access to a representation of the thought-object.
  • They can now discuss it as a tangible entity, and change its properties by manipulating the representation or by adjusting variables in the thought-object itself.

Note: this is probably very similar to the process of making a thought “happen” in your own mind.

More slides from Lecture 2

Video of Lecture 2

Also posted in Diagrams, Lectures | Leave a comment