AUDIENCING examines the role of the audience as a social arena, taking on formal aspects of spectacle found in live music and political speeches. Drawing from the architecture of the VW Dome, the work references similar domed structures and their relationship to narratives of spectatorship and survival—as biological experiments or as refuge for victims of natural disasters.
The core of the work is an original score, which takes cues from a wide range of audio genres including pop, political speeches, voice-overs, and experimental noise. AUDIENCING questions how technological innovations have created limitless potential for consumption of entertainment, complicated the dynamic between performers and their audiences, and placed unattainable demands on the biological body, sometimes with dire consequences as in the cases of Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and Prince.
Responding to the aestheticization of performers' labor, as well as the pain and exhaustion of performance and its visibility, there are no live performers in this work. Instead, the audience is seated beneath a vaulted stage in an arrangement that refuses any unified perspective, undermining the stage’s function as a frame for performance. A programmed and automated sound and lighting system transforms the dome into a multidimensional playback device.
