James Borchers: Obiectum Resonare

For the first workshop, James introduced the students to the concepts of his installation. He demonstrated a variety of resonant objects for the students, like those that made up his piece. The students experimented with making sounds with the objects and creating compositions using graphic scores, which they performed with James.

The students also worked with vocal coach Laurel Ann White to record phrases in the studio at Jack Straw. Their recordings were then incorporated into the gallery audio; when a camera in the gallery sensed motion it would play the recordings back with different sonic modulations.

For the second workshop, the students learned more about musical composition with graphic scores and created their own tactile graphic scores. Their pieces were performed by James and musicians Dale Speicher and Peter Williams, with the students conducting.

For this project, AVIA and Jack Straw were presented with the challenge of developing an accessible medium for graphic scores, which are typically a visual format. After experiments with various materials, Jesse Minkert settled on a method using brightly colored artist wax placed on black board. The students had fun making these wax creations, which could be read with the eyes or hands.