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.
Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein, or a Modern Prometheus is utilized as the score for this work by Dwight Frizzell. Sounds mentioned in the novel are performed by Foley artists/musicians in the sequence they occur in the novel. Voices from the novel and supplementary texts are presented through multi-channel sound projection.
An actor performs the role of Captain Walton, whose letters to his sister in England comprise the entire “Frankenstein” novel. Walton’s pen is amplified by a contact microphone as he writes.
These three chronologies of information are disembodied from being in time-sync with each other, then reattached and animated by the performance.
The church performance space is transformed into the creature’s body—the alter becomes the head, the audience sits within the body, and the Foley artists/musicians (on each side of the audience) are the creature’s limbs.
The Disembodied Voices—Mary Wollstonecraft (Sarah Montague), Percy Shelly (William Easton), Mary Shelley (Susie Ersahin), The Creature (Arnold Young), Victor Frankenstein (William Dye).
Live Performers—Foley Artists (Mark Lowry, Patrick Conway, Arnold Young, Marc Deckard), Guitar (Jim Cottingham), Soprano (Pamela Bathurst).
This production was made possible by support from the New Music Institute of Kansas City, an artist-in-residence grant from Harvestworks, Inc./Studio Pass in New York City, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, and the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.
