WAV_LENGTH_01 – Take out Buffalo

by temporary distortion

Performance in progress followed by a conference and discussion with the artist

Free, but registration required

WAV_LENGTH_01 is the first in a series of media art performances concerned with the 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 film in existence.” Snow’s 45-minute slow zoom into an empty room, punctuated by four fleeting “human events,” provides an anti-narrative shot that interrogates the possibility of reframing the viewer as an exercise in altering consciousness. Through this complex framework, the WAV_LENGTH series will explore the deep connections between sensory perception and emotional resonance, inviting audiences to immerse themselves in rich, monochrome worlds where sight, sound and story have the potential to converge or refract into individual wavelengths.

WAV_LENGTH_01 focuses on red, considered the first color a newborn can discern, the last color we see before we die, and the first color to be named by primitive cultures around the world. Each project in the series will examine the history, cultural coding, and sensual impact of a single hue, to explore how color resides not in light or matter, but in the wide variety of embodied observations made by the viewer. Color perception will be revealed to be a complex, relative, interdependent, and ever-changing phenomenon, interpreted by a socially coded, individual, and inevitably historically charged perceiving body. The series as a whole will be used as a prism to conduct an extended meditation on the contingent nature of color perception, or what Josef Albers called “the most relative medium in art.”

Conference and artist talk

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 Arts, Media, Performance and Design at York University), Dan Shanahan (Artistic Director of Torn Space Theater), Melissa Meola (Associate Director of Torn Space Theater), Frank Napolski (Lighting Designer, Co-Founder of Groupwork), 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 theatre. In addition to the use of digital media in theatre, we will discuss how AI, algorithms and cutting-edge digital technologies have the potential to impact the arts, push the boundaries of creativity and offer new possibilities for storytelling. This event will bring together artists, academics and audiences for a joint discussion to explore the future of digital technologies in the theatre landscape.