Jason Freeman: Graph Theory
Artist(s):
Title:
- Graph Theory
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 2008
Category:
Artist Statement:
Contemporary technological and aesthetic developments challenge us to play a more engaged and active role as cultural consumers. We help create the content we enjoy: we curate the playlists we listen to, we compete in the online games we play, and we collaboratively filter the media we watch. Within this context, traditional concert performance, particularly of classical and contemporary music, seems increasingly anachronistic. Audiences sit in dark halls, often looking at a conductor whose back is turned toward them, afraid to cough or sneeze lest they disturb their neighbors.
Graph Theory aims to bridge this experiential gap. Through its availability on the internet, Graph Theory creatively engages audiences outside the concert hall. The project incorporates their activities into the context of a live concert performance. Web site visitors, who need not have specialized musical training, use a visual interface to navigate short, looping musical fragments to create their own unique path through the open-form composition for solo violin. Before each concert performance, the live performer, a violinist, visits the web site to print out a new copy of the score, the linear fragments of which are ordered based on the decisions made by site visitors.
Sponsors:
Graph Theory is a commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Greenwall Foundation. I created this work in collaboration with designer Patricia Reed and violinist Maja Cerar.
