SCATR.irl: [on_network_performativity]

This 30-minute live performance is an extension of the dynamic, improvisational coding context of _irl. This intervention features the processes of networks and surveillance, appropriating their technologies for sonic texturing and spatialization. With the consent of the audience, the performance “taps” into their phones and turns each speaker into individual voices in an ensemble soundscape the live-coding. The custom software, called ‘SCATR’, is a performance tool that also leverages the screens of individual cellphones, each becoming individual pixels that renders the collective audience and venue into a low-resolution screen.

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Premiered June 2022 as an official selection of the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe, NM, in the main theater of the Center for Contemporary Arts. Ideal conditions are a darkened auditorium with a capacity of 80 or more people and requires a suitably large projection screen. Theoretically, there is no limit to how many people can participate.

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Winner of the Artlink 22nd Annual Juried Exhibition, November 2022

https://artlinkphx.org/jury-awards-top-prize-to-shomit-barua/