Listen Live on KKFI
At 7pm on the fifth Thursday of the month (Fifth Thursdays in 2022 are March, June, September, December).About the Show
From Ark to Microchip
The provocative "From Ark to Microchip" mixes commentary, dramatic re-enactment, original music, historic voices, audio art and sound effects in a pan-historical, pan-cultural milieu. Programs in the program series have received several awards.
Performed by newEar featuring soprano Patricia Johnson.
“…a 30-minute dramatization of a woman isolated in a damp, echoing cave. Removed from all time cues, she becomes obsessive-compulsive, brushing her teeth, free-associating words on a piece of paper. Soprano Patricia Johnson gave a stunning portrayal of Our Subject (as she is called), dispatching the most disjunct vocal lines with pinpoint tuning and ringing tone…In addition to the live dramatization, with lab-coated “scientists” observing, there were interactions with prerecorded audio tapes and live and recorded video projections.”
–Scott Cantrell, The Kansas City Star
Out of Time
A monodrama by Michael Henry and Dwight Frizzell
Scored for:
Solo Voice, Tape, Multichannel Sound Projection, live video and Chamber Orchestra
Out of Time is dedicated to Patricia Johnson (New York City Opera) and newEar
The Scientific method presents us with a most dehumanizing theatrical scheme. An almost mindless repetition of tasks, the objectification of test subjects, the elimination of variables, and the voyeurism of a observation team all characterize the kind of experimentation that forms the structure and setting of Out of Time.
Inspired by research into human biological time-sense (circadian rhythms sleep-deprivation and isolation experiments) in which the subject is deprived of any chronological demarcation (no sunlight, clocks, communications media, reproduced music, etc.) Out of Time takes us deep underground into the timeless chambers of a cave, whereOur Subject (Patricia Johnson) is isolated from the solar cycle and social contact. Her writing desk, the bone-chilling cavern seething with dripping water, long reverberations of the escape hatch high above, the electrodes and cameras from which she is observed and a mercurial mirror define the physical parameters of the world she both accepts and resists.
Out of Time is a collaboration between composer/sound designer Michael Henry and sound artist/writer Dwight Frizzell, who in creating the sonic landscape, made subterranean recordings in Devil’s Well, Greer Springs, and White’s Cave in the Mark Twain National Forest in south central Missouri. The work is scored for 13 instrumentalists, coloratura soprano soloist and a multichannel sound mix of pre-recorded and real-time sound projections. Through the use of various interactive technologies, the soloist is given real-time control over various sound elements.
With out of Time, the distinction between stream-of-consciousness (dream-logic, libidinal drives, fantasy, interiorization) and steam-of-existence (aleatoric constructs, montage, cut-ups, structuralization), loses its meaning. Technology as metaphoric appendages to the body is questioned.
The work emphasizes transmissions that go nowhere yet are accessible everywhere, narcissistic feedback circuits full of highly orchestrated disarticulations, the metamorphoses of multiple selves, a circumvention of correspondence between the visual and the auditory, voice sampling and theatrical experiment, stasis contrasted with the ceaseless eternal nature of one’s perception of time, and the breakdown of meaning due to the objectification of the body.
-Michael Henry and Dwight Frizzell
