Photon Ecstasy Livestream

Photon Ecstasy is a performance project that engages music, sound, light, and science fiction to address the hubris of certainty. Created by l’Artiste ordinaire (Melissa Grey and David Morneau), it is a concert-length performance for spoken word, trombone, interactive light and electronics—including the beeps of subverted video game systems, samples from the NASA Audio Collection, and the randomness of the benjolin modular synthesizer.

Tune in for the livestream at 7:30PM to listen HERE.

The project is based on Dan Rose’s The DNA-Photon Project, an artist book and twenty-five machine-sculptures, which explores the certitude of industrialized capitalist countries, national security secrecy, and corporate overreach. The performance is an adaptation of the original story about the quest to beam one woman’s DNA into the many worlds of the universe. Further inspiration is drawn from Message From Earth, the record created by NASA for Voyager, which transmits human culture deep into space. Grey and Morneau blur the lines between presentation and performance, fact and fiction, and art and commentary.

Photon Ecstasy was commissioned by the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania for Arbitrary Pleasures: Plaisirs Arbitraires, an exhibition of some never-before-seen artist books from Penn emeritus professor, Dan Rose. Drawing from the tradition of formal constraints Rose’s visual narratives of such topics as the underarm, anthropology, philosophy, sex, motherhood, large corporations, and gender identity take the viewer-reader on journeys into elegant absurdity.

l’Artiste ordinaire will premiere Photon Ecstasy at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania on October 20, 2016.

Melissa Grey – benjolin modular synth, Merlin Music Machine, spoken word
David Morneau – Nintendo Game Boy, benjolin modular synth, spoken word, trombone