School of Fish, 2019-present | Multiple locations, USA
School of Fish was first commissioned by the Walker Art Center in 2019. Three iterations were eventually presented as part of the Walker's First Free Saturday and Sensory Friendly Sunday (SFS) programs, the latter of which is designed for children, teens, and adults with sensory processing differences, autism spectrum disorder, or developmental disabilities. School of Fish was next adapted for Pancake House (Minneapolis, MN) in December 2019 as a featured installation of In Situ: an experimental festival, presented by NADA (Michael Masaru Flora and Christian Langheinrich), exploring the boundaries of sound and music and featuring both local and national artists. Most recently, School of Fish was installed at the Minneapolis Institute of Art for the February 2020 iteration of their popular family program series, co-sponsored by The Current (Minnesota Public Radio).
There is value in exploring proprioception—gaining an awareness of our bodies’ relationship to their spatial surroundings, particularly with regard to the vibrations, latent frequencies, and invisible sonic elements of space. Resonating sound waves can touch the entire body, resulting in unique, internalized experiences that facilitate self-reflection. School of Fish is an interactive sound installation developed in response to these notions. Within the School of Fish environment, people can learn together how sound behaves in unpremeditated contexts, experiencing the free coalescence of form.
Together with my friend and collaborator Jaak Jensen, we designed a multi-channel array of sonar sensors and loudspeakers that respond to individuals’ movement. The technology allowed us to map a room with multiple sonar sensors so that, depending on how and where a person moved within the space, they produced varying audible results.
School of Fish decontextualizes and complicates traditional notions of music pedagogy and performance. It emphasizes the ways in which play and natural movement contribute to music-making and rejects the notion that musicians and composers must possess formal musical backgrounds.
