Apr 16, 7:00 PM CDT

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1542 N. Milwaukee Ave. #3

2nd & 4th Floors

Maximizing the possibilities of time-based arts, //sense presents a two-hour experimental theater work that celebrates cross-pollination between sound, video, performance, and technologies — featuring a team of more than 40 artists. Through collaboration and interactions, we seek to expand beyond our individual expertise. In this production, artists explore comprehensive idioms: video/film projections, interactive game engines, motion capture, artificial intelligence processing, movements, sound, event scores, and beyond. This maximalist approach allows us to execute our collective visions to the fullest. Through our real-time synergy, experimentation, and interactions, we unleash concealed potentials that would otherwise be unachievable through solo practice.

//sense provides a safe space for performers from all backgrounds to experiment with their practice and expertise. We embrace performers of all levels, backgrounds, and idioms. This production enables untrained or first-time performers to depart from their comfort zone. As early as the late ‘60s, pioneers like Scratch Orchestra, led by Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons, and Howard Skempton, invited untrained musicians to create music. This concept successfully decentralizes the hierarchy between leader and members, allowing players to focus on the joy of rehearsals and performances. Modeling this communal practice, we continue to turn performances into an accessible and enjoyable art-making process.

We explore theatrical idioms through immersion, site-specificity, interaction, and improvisation. Adopting the immersive theater model, we turn the MacLean Ballroom into a site-specific installation space. By transforming this event-holding space into a performative stage, we repurpose and redefine what a venue can be. The removal of an actual stage necessitates audiences and performers to navigate themselves through the space during the performance. This design defies a one-sided dynamic inherited in traditional theater by dissolving the boundaries between performers and audiences. It also effectively terminates the passivity of ordinary spectators and activates them into active participants. Furthering this tactic, we draw reference from the Fluxus performances in the late ‘60s. By creating interactive installations and providing event scores, we encourage interactions between participants, audiences, and artists.

Referencing modular synthesizers, this theater production pioneers modular performance. Our theater production examines the simultaneous use of structured performance and improvisations. We segment and design performances into various modules. With this flexibility, we can freely arrange sections across the timeline. We also enable subsequent additions and subtractions of parts to accommodate future re-runs. Modular performance allows a huge diversity of performative idioms, aggrandizing artistic synergy to the fullest extent. By including a wide spectrum of sensation and perception, we expand audiences’ experience through time and space.

//sense revives and reinvents collaborative historical models leftover from Jikken Kōbō, Gutai Art Association, Fluxus, Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), and beyond. We revisit their unfinished missions and explorations to push forward a new form of aesthetics, artistry, and idioms. Besides, we strive to build and nurture a community where time-based artists enjoy positive collaborations. Most importantly, based on our shared goals, mutual respect, and understanding, we foster common ground for fellows to develop life-long friendships that shall stand the test of time.

—gordon fung