Dead voices and lost sounds: an imagined sonic history

Adrienne Kapstein

doi:10.33871/23179937.2021.9.2.10

Abstract

A project description of a sound art installation and interactive performance presented as part of the Up Close Festival in New York City in the winter of 2019/2020. The article is authored by the creator and director of the piece, Adrienne Kapstein. Created for an all-age audience, the piece was a unique, relational and socially engaged experience that merged sound art, live performance, illusion, technology, and audience participation. Designed to be completed in partnership with members of the community it sought to serve, the piece invited participation from every audience member through multiple and varied means of engagement.

Highlights

A project description of a sound art installation and interactive performance presented as part of the Up Close Festival in New York City in the winter of 2019/2020
What if the dead voices, lost sounds, and forgotten noises of the past could be heard? What if sound waves did not dissipate but rather resonated for all time? What if sound seeped into the material world around us and we could excavate and resurrect these sonic artifacts? What would this sonic history tell us? These were the playful premises that inspired The Society of Historic Sonic Happening or SHSH; part sound art installation; part immersive and interactive theatrical performance created for an audience of all ages created and directed by, Adrienne Kapstein, and sound designer, Bhurin Sead, and presented in the Up Close Festival at the New Ohio Theater in New York City in the winter of 2019/2020
The theatrical framing of the festival as a whole invited audiences to re-contextualize their relationship to the site — the building and the land on which it stands — and reimagine The New Ohio Theater, known as The Archive Building, as a living archive in which the collective task of the audience and performers alike was to joyfully excavate — as well as to reimagine and construct — the neighborhood’s history and its journey through time. (MUSANTE, 2019, p. 1)

Summary

Introduction

A project description of a sound art installation and interactive performance presented as part of the Up Close Festival in New York City in the winter of 2019/2020. These were the playful premises that inspired The Society of Historic Sonic Happening or SHSH; part sound art installation; part immersive and interactive theatrical performance created for an audience of all ages created and directed by, Adrienne Kapstein, and sound designer, Bhurin Sead, and presented in the Up Close Festival at the New Ohio Theater in New York City in the winter of 2019/2020.

Results

Conclusion