And So Now
Video Link
https://www.bam.org/visual-art/2018/and-so-now
Composed by Ben Vida
Vocalists:
Nina Dante
Brandon Lopez
Jessica Pavone
Ben Vida
Vocalists:
Nina Dante
Brandon Lopez
Jessica Pavone
Ben Vida
BAM is pleased to present a new experimental work by Ben Vida that examines the aural threshold between verbal sense and nonsense. Featuring a quartet of vocalists, And So Nowoscillates between the phonetic and the linguistic; at times the tempo and rhythm of the speech lifts the language outside the realm of communication, shifting it into pure sound. Cyclical singing is juxtaposed with spoken monologues foregrounding the material aspects of language. As the vocalists exchange words and phrases, a narrative develops, revealing how the communicative “signal to noise” ratios have fallen out of balance. Accompanying the vocalists is a soporific bed of electronically synthesized audio. This lattice of voices and electronics acts to create a mesmerizing aural experience.
Inspired by the text sourcing methods used in John Cage’s Diary and Thomas Bernhard’s Voice Imitator, the rhythmical essays of Gertrude Stein and the parsing systems of the Conceptual Writers movement, the verbal score of And So Now references a history of experimental writing.
Inspired by the text sourcing methods used in John Cage’s Diary and Thomas Bernhard’s Voice Imitator, the rhythmical essays of Gertrude Stein and the parsing systems of the Conceptual Writers movement, the verbal score of And So Now references a history of experimental writing.
