Mediation Station

an unauthored music terminal

Introduction

This computer kiosk and listening station focuses on "non-authored" projects, primarily musical, in which forces other than "the composer" are invited to influence or direct the score. This kiosk was co-organized by a composer and a contemporary art curator, so these projects are placed within an interdisciplinary exploration of interactivity, performance, and reception.

In a social context vastly changed by new media and digital technologies, notions of connectivity, interactivity, and algorithmic mediation are commonplace aspects of everyday life. These technologies facilitate new directions and philosophies in process-based work and interactivity, across artistic disciplines. After John Cage, after Fluxus text-instructions, after Minimalist dance, we are still surrounded by art practices that invite outside forces in to play. Audience-interactive "relational" art is more popular than ever. Computer software, chance operations, and even plants are becoming musical collaborators. This trend is, perhaps, connected to our greater social acceptance of media (in both senses) as an everyday filtering device as well as a dynamic site for interactivity. Art projects extend "authorship" to the performed actions of audiences or other contextual coincidences.

Mediation Station presents music, video, and interactive composition devices that employ, at least in part, extended modes of authorship. Rather than inviting intervention, it would be more accurate to describe these projects as bringing different filtering systems to bear upon the work, during the performance as well as during the conception. The works included here represent a range of approaches, media, and artistic intentions, organized around the themes of different filters: human nature, structures of nature, formulas for success, and transcribing structure. Some of the selections appear in multiple thematic groups, and some of the selections barely seem to fit in any of them (a bit round peggy in the square holes), but that's just part of the fun: it's a quirky collection of quirky projects.

About the Curators

Jason Freeman’s works break down conventional barriers between composers, performers, and listeners, using cutting-edge technology and unconventional notation to turn audiences and musicians into compositional collaborators. His music has been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, Speculum Musicae, the So Percussion Group, the Nieuw Ensemble, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and Evan Ziporyn; and his interactive installations and software art have been exhibited at the Lincoln Center Festival, the Boston CyberArt Festival, and the Transmediale Festival and featured in the New York Times and on National Public Radio. N.A.G. (Network Auralization for Gnutella) (2003), a commission from Turbulence.org, was described by Billboard as “…an example of the web’s mind-expanding possibilities.”

Freeman received his B.A. in music from Yale University and his M.A. and D.M.A. in composition from Columbia University. He recently joined the faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he is an assistant professor in the music department.

Rebecca Uchill is Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. She has an interest in process-based art, interdisciplinarity, and alternative platforms for presentation and exhibition. In previous exhibitions that she organized as curator, Uchill’s projects have included the production of an audience-participatory fashion show by the House of Diehl at MASS MoCA (for the exhibition Trade Show, 2005) and a commission for a surveillance camera walking tour of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, by the Surveillance Camera Players (for the exhibition No, Tresspassing at Priska Juschka Fine Arts, 2003). Her first IMA exhibition, sub-merging: a wetland project by spurse, features an artistic investigation of the museum ecosystem, and includes a working laboratory in the museum galleries, gardens on the campus grounds, and an iTunes audio tour. This exhibition is on view in the Off the Wall gallery through December 3, 2006.

Uchill received her B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from New York University’s Gallatin School for Individualized Study, and her M.A. from the Williams College Graduate Program in Art History at the Clark Art Institute. After a two-year graduate fellowship at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, she joined the Indianapolis Museum of Art in September, 2005.

Suggested Resources

Mediation Station is organized by Rebecca Uchill and Jason Freeman for the Perform.Media Festival.