2023
For solo performer with computer, MIDI breath controller, automated percussion instruments, speakers, color spotlight, color LED light bulbs; duration 6 hours daily, for the duration of the exhibition period
”In Refrains and variations, an open-ended composition that reoccurs in short segments in different musical and spatial variations, the artist wears a binaural microphone headset, a special set of over-the-ear mobile microphones that stream the sounds being played in the space that closely capture the way a human hears. The feed from these devices will be heard through headphones in a smaller, domestically decorated space where visitors will be able to listen and watch Young carry himself to different parts of the room through windows facing into the performance space. The familiar surroundings, yet disembodied experience of listening in the viewing space is a physical reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rear Window. The viewer is both separated from the action and intimately connected to it.
A program generates the composition in real time, starting with chord number 0 at the beginning of each day. Each segment is 225 seconds long. At the start of each segment the program also signals the spatial arrangement of the sound sources, which the artist then execute.”