Daniel stayed here in June, 2014. As his visit slowly became a residency, we began planning a salon around the theme of internet dating, an activity of great interest to both of us personally as well as culturally. We put together an ensemble of seven people with laptops to perform his work Body Piece, which comprises bits of text thoughtfully culled from OKCupid profiles and read out by a chorus of computer voices. With Daniel’s guidance, each individual performer developed their own score, a repertoire of phrases, over the course of several rehearsals. Daniel conducted the performance, which took place in the kitchen.
Daniel also performed his Candle Piece, a circuit composition that uses photoresistors to change pitch according to variations in light, converting the flickering of a five-minute candle into a five-minute musical work. This performance was dedicated to the memory of our friend Matt O’Connell (1987-2014), one of the brightest lights I’ve ever known.
Upstairs in his bedroom, Daniel and I put together an intimate piece that can’t be described here.
I contributed a social experiment that has come to be known as Pheromone Piece. I bought a number of human pheromone perfume sprays from the internet and coded them by color, hiding their purposes. These pheromones are meant to facilitate specific favorable interactions between the wearer and other people around them (for example, sexual flirting; the divulging of secrets; an impression that the wearer is funny and popular). As guests arrived, they were asked to participate in the pheromone experiment by choosing a color. Guests wore a colored sticker, so that everyone could see who was wearing the same pheromone. They were invited to sniff each other and to guess what the different colors meant. The perfume base smelled sickly and overpowering but that didn’t stop strangers from bending in close to each other’s necks all night.
— Julia
All photos were taken by Nate Boguszewski unless otherwise noted.
event program:
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