“The mission of men there seems to be,
like so many busy demons,
to drive the forest out of the country.”

Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods (1864)

Get closer to the art.

Framed art on the wall surprisingly chirps.

The sound environment is shaped by the typical behavior of motions of the viewers of an art exhibit: a dance of increasing and decreasing proximities, of proxemics.  people are trees harnesses the energy of this motion and use it as a device to determine changes in the resulting sound environment, in the resulting counterpoint of frequencies.

The viewer becomes a performer.

Changes in sound are not exclusively determined by the viewers. Rather, they are determined by the inter-action of viewers + the luminous environment + the special way in which these artworks, thanks to their reflective surfaces, affect each other, respond to each other. Flipping transmitter and receiver agencies, viewers become performers, artworks become artists.

people are trees has been assembled with the technical assistance of Jacob Faunce.

Luciano Chessa: Guitar, Voice, Electronics

Thanks to Nate Davis, Alexis Iammarino, Donna McNeil, Maeve O’Regan

Excerpt from the installation opening + live performance on April 20, 2018 at CHURCH, Rockland, ME.
Commissioned by the Steel House. Video by Nate Davis.