ZERO1 will wrapping up our 2012 ZERO1 Biennial 9 Evenings performance series this Thursday with California-based artist Nina Waisman as she presents Body Envelope at the Montalvo Arts Center. Nina Waisman is a visual and media artist who works with technologically driven forms of control and communication, exploring their impact on the body’s actions in space and the mind’s perceptions of time. As a former dancer, she takes a special interested in the role movement plays in forming our thoughts: such “physical thinking” has been posited by neurologists and cognitive scientists to be the pre-conscious scaffolding for all human logic. Body Envelope is an interactive sound installation and evening of performances developed in collaboration with New York-based choreographer Mariah Maloney, and Los Angeles-based choreographers, dancers and artists Natalie Metzger and Flora Wiegmann.
The performance takes place in a six foot square interactive sound chandelier suspended in the center of the Main Hall of Montalvo’s historic Villa. Translucent tubes, wires and sensors are hung from the ceiling to create an amoeba-like three dimensional envelope. As the performers move through the space, they activate the sensors which trigger sounds whose pitch, speed, volume and spatialization they can manipulate through their movements. For this iteration of Body Envelope, Waisman has created a new soundscape drawing on site-specific and historic sounds connected to Montalvo. These include vintage cylinder recordings from the 1920s and sonic echoes of the high-life led by Senator Phelan and his guests at Villa Montalvo, mashed-up with the sometime-dicordant sounds of life outside that dream-like bubble.
Don't miss this amazing performance! It will take place at 7:00pm at the Historic Villa at Montalvo Arts Center and is free and open to the public. The performance will be followed by a Q & A with the artist and her collaborators. In addition, visitors will have the opportunity to interact with and explore Body Envelope, composing their own shifting sonic cosmos.
For more information about Nina Waisman about her new work, check out this video.