Naga

Live electronic noise collaboration between DSE and Witches of Malibu, 2013

Constrictor

Pantheon is addressing capitalism through advertising, consumerism, and how human relations and social structures are mediated through signs and objects. Like a chain that connects and offer paths, they can seduce the viewer and link together a network of objects and signs. Viewers may sit on the lower beams where seating is provided in four places. With this gesture, the audience becomes socialized within the structure of the work and is framed by Pantheon as a stage. 

Mounted under the top perimeter are straight lengths of white neon. These illuminate the space, seating, and participants underneath and contribute to the marketplace status, social behavior, and collective experience of the work. Two small speakers are mounted to the top beams that emit a composed soundtrack compiled from field recordings, music, and spoken word.

PANTHEON SOUNDTRACK

Greeter incorporates a 3-channel audio created from prepared texts that are remixed and read by AI programs using male and female voices. Composed and layered within the spoken word are electronic sounds recorded from mixer feedback. Greeter is a surrogate actor that is presenting and is part of the Displayer series that incorporates a diverse selection of AI generated faces. I am interested in evoking the digital uncanny and how the idea of selfhood and identity is entangled in an aggregate of data, images, texts, and locations. In digital capitalism, the data-double and racialized data bodies are commodities that are regulated and conditioned by interfaces used to classify, frame, and link them.

GREETER audio excerpt

DSE performed live at the event NOISECONOMY at Printed Matter, NYC.

NOISECONOMY

Performance
Soundtrack for a Seascape (Round), 2023
Annenberg Community Beach House, Santa Monica, CA

Swept Away: Love Letters to a Surrogate(s)
In the fall of 2022, sixty-five artists from Los Angeles provided sets of instructions in the form of love letters to an equal number of artists from the East End of Long Island who performed them at the waters’ edge in front of the pavilion at Main Beach in East Hampton. In the spring of 2023, East End artists wrote love letters to LA artists that were performed at Will Rogers State Beach, Santa Monica in conjunction with the 18th Street Arts Center. Over two consecutive days, April 22 and 23, West Coast artists responded to prompts submitted by their East Coast counterparts addressing themes of deep ecology and the interdependence of humans with other living beings and ecological networks. 

My response to Barry Schwabsky’s poem, Soundtrack for the Seascape, was having it read in the structure of a musical round by six readers through megaphones. They were standing at the edge of the water and their voices mixed with the sound of the waves crashing on the shore. 

Curators
Warren Neidich
Renee Petropoulos
Anuradha Vikram

Guild Hall Director
East Hampton, NY
Julie McKim

East Coast Collaborator
Barry Schwabsky 

West Coast Collaborator
David Schafer

Support
Annenberg Community Beach House Santa Monica
18th Street Arts Center Santa Monica
Guild Hall Museum East Hampton, Long Island, NY

Performance Readers
Kaya Cooper
Liam Harden
Siorne John
Maria Cervantes-Mejia
Jean-Paul Miller
Bree Phimphachanh

Soundtrack for a Seascape

Merchandiser is based on a display for goods and signage. Each of the four panels has marketing phrases and an array of images. The images include faces that are a combination of AI generated, stock photos, and celebrity headshots. These images and photos are acquired from a variety of agencies and data platforms. I am interested in the types of facial recognition that are activated from phantom-like AI generated, to stock photos of actual people meant to be anonymous, to celebrities who are recognized in our cultural consciousness, and the interplay between them. They represent a diverse cast as in theater who perform their role as actors within the work. This work is staged as a theater-object that is intended to create relational situations to engage viewers. The audio is comprised of a variety of spoken word with layers of ambient and binaural-beat music.

Merchandiser

WHAT'S YOUR GOAL?

Till the End of Time

Live performance at Human Resources LA. CA.
With Bastard Noise, Witches of Malibu, Amps for Christ, Jason Wade, Relay for Death, and Conscious Summary. 

untitled track: 01/10 2015

Compression Progression

2004
wood, plastic laminate, powered speakers, steel, playback system, cabling.
18″ x 18″ x 18″
Installation view

david schafer studio

Pinned to spotlight

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