Performers combine visual, auditory stimuli for unique performance

What do exhalation, a skin disease, and an accordion have in common?

Each served as an artistic component of LoudSOUNDLive, the multimedia event that took place in the UNF Gallery Sept. 10.

“I thought it was excellent,” senior English major Adrianna Fuentes said. “They had images flashing … that juxtapose[d] instruments like the guitar … and the sounds of breath. It was definitely out of this world.”

The monthly series LoudSOUNDLive incorporates the live music of experimental artists with visual mediums. September’s performance was the first of the fall semester and featured musicians Daniel McCoy (guitar, computer, accordion) and Jason Arnold (saxophone, abused trumpet, records, rocks, sticks, metal).

“There are all these kinds of ways that sound can alter your experience in the world,” McCoy said. “It doesn’t have to be this structured, harmonic, melodic approach.”

The separate approach LoudSOUNDLive takes can’t be accurately represented in just musical notes; artists who perform in it associate themselves with noise and experimental genres, using everyday objects or even normal instruments to make extraordinary sounds.

McCoy and Arnold’s performance included a guitar played with a violin bow, belching, an accordion, carefully timed respiration, computer-generated rhythms, an abused trumpet and a modified saxophone that produced a sound barely resembling its jazz origins.

“It’s about sound perhaps in an unfamiliar form.” said Professor Clark Lunberry, the coordinator of the event since its formation in December 2007. “The loud part doesn’t necessarily mean loud in volume, but loud in the sense of it being big and perhaps brass,”

“I’ve been resisting the idea that it be … one person coming in and doing music. I’d rather it be a mixture of events.”

To mix visuals with their sound, McCoy and Arnold chose to create a slideshow as a thematic backdrop to their improvised music. Pictures of skin diseases, industrialized gears, healthy skin, medical diagrams and various metals were all selected to repeat for the entirety of the show.

“I like the ability to communicate with other people – but not using traditional means to communicate,” Arnold said. “It takes them out of their comfortable, easy-to-listen-to state.”

LoudSOUNDLive was built on these principles using untraditional means of communication, Lunberry said.

“I think people have certain habits and expectations,” Lunberry said. “If someone is playing a saxophone, it’s supposed to sound a certain way … and if that’s violated, people get a little disoriented or they don’t know how to listen. This is intended to push the boundaries of our habits of listening.”

The shows take place the second Wednesday of each month and are scheduled through January. Lunberry plans to search for additional artists to perform February through May, he said.

“My hope is that the word will get out, more people will find out about it and try it out,” Lunberry said. “All the shows have been really different, so what they did [in September] I’m sure is going to be very different from what ends up happening in October.”

The next show, entitled “Whimsical Fetus Octet Orchestra”, is scheduled to be performed Oct. 8 by students Ryan Reno and Jason Irvin.

E-mail Rebecca McKinnon at staff3@unfspinnaker.com.