Interval/Forum is a conceptual environments collaborating with audience perception and participation. The piece experiments with an audience situated in a large stage setting that contains sound design and periodic lighting changes. The installation-as-performance environment incorporates filmic cut and fade techniques of coordinated light and sound framing gestures along with color washes and audience illumination. These techniques aim to shift the social orientation of space dynamically between levels of “incidental” and “focused.” Sound is approached as architectural, using found sound, sound effects, white noise and contemporary music to create illusory audio design in the space, functioning in conjunction with technical lighting. The piece places an emphasis on both visual and social “afterimages” where there is a cognitive and collective response to abrupt scene changes, allowing room for emergent audience response to the unpredictability of the environment.

Interval Forum was presented by ISSUE Project Room at Irondale Arts Center in Brooklyn, December 2, 2017 as part of Byron Westbrook’s 2017 Residency with ISSUE Project Room