DRIFT/LOOP

DRIFT/LOOP: A 24-Hour Performance Installation

Friday, November 1, 2024 at 12:00pm
Olin Library, Campbell Reading Room and 2nd Floor Balconies

Free and open to the public

Friday, November 1, noon – Saturday, November 2, noon

If you would like to participate in the DRIFT/LOOP performance, please watch this short overview video and fill out this Google form to indicate your interest and availability. 

Come hear tones drift in and out of Olin Library throughout Homecoming Weekend. Over the course of twenty-four hours, the stacks will ring vibrantly with reverberated tones, shimmer in small noises, and become perforated with musical exclamations. This ambitious installation/performance/large-scale happening is part of DRIFT/LOOP, an expansive multi-tiered space for sonic engagement and reflection, involving distributed performance, sound installation, audio streaming and radio transmission, community participation, and group contributed performances and scores. 

The project began in 2020 and was initiated and commissioned by Metropolis Ensemble and Andrew Cyr, conductor/producer, in collaboration with composer and Wesleyan Professor of Music Paula Matthusen, visual artist Olivia Valentine, and poet and media scholar Tung-Hui Hu, with original audio interpretations by Singularity [Saxophone Quartet], Metropolis Ensemble, and Matthusen. The project will also feature the Wesleyan University Orchestra directed by Nadya Potemkina. This realization marks the first time that the entire project has been presented for the length of a full day. Audience and participants are encouraged to wander in and out throughout the day.

Everyone is invited to participate in this long-form performance installation, freely and in a variety of ways, including:

  • Listening while wandering in, out, and through
  • Pausing to rest and experience a longer or shorter slice of the piece
  • Performing on any instrument*
  • Singing or humming while moving from space to space
  • Tuning in to any of three separate live audio streams

*You are invited to bring your own instrument.

Co-sponsored by the Metropolis Ensemble, Wesleyan University’s Office of Academic Affairs, Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, Music Department, and World Music Archives & Music Library.