Martin Rodriguez Tag

Audio PlaceboPlaza

Audio Placebo Plaza

22.06.2021 , Digital Media, Embodied Media/Performance/Scores, Gallery Artwork, Music Composition, Portfolio, Sound Art

Poster for Audio Placebo Plaza: Montreal Edition (2021)

2021 / 2022

In June 2021 the trio transformed a former perfume shop in the St Hubert Plaza of Montreal into a pop up radio station, sensory room, therapist office, and audio production studio, uniting these spaces through the aesthetics of a sandwich shop or cafe to offer customizable audio placebo “specials” and “combos” to the public.

Founded upon principles of feminism, socialism, and audio production excellence, Audio Placebo Plaza invites everyday people to take appointments with artists to discuss how an audio placebo could help improve their lives. These appointments are entirely focused on the individual and are in themselves part of the process. Common topics of discussion included increasing productivity, self-esteem, self-care, social interactivity, brain hacking, mitigating insomnia, and pain management, but also one’s aural preferences, sensitivities, and curiosities. Intake sessions were conducted in a blended telematic/in-person structure to determine one’s familiarity and comfort levels with a variety of psychosomatic audio techniques including but not limited to soundscapes, binaural beats, simulated social interactions, positive affirmations, drone, participatory vocalization, ASMR, guided meditation and deep listening.

After the consultation is complete, team members met to discuss each participant’s case to fulfill their “prescription,” and also to divide the labor amongst the three creators. The collaborations are non-hierarchical, adaptive, and simultaneous: one might be working on up to four projects at a time, or trade tasks depending on one’s backlog of labor. Labor is divided into recording sounds, conducting intake sessions, writing scripts, performing spoken or sung content, writing music, editing and audio mixing, cleaning and maintaining the shared spares, and communicating with visitors or walk-ins.

Audio Placebo Plaza Radio broadcast was facilitated through a pirate radio transmitter as well as an internet radio station. We broadcast completed placebos, shared technical advice and performance practices during informal critiques, work sessions in progress through the DAW, and sometimes informal chats with visitors. Intake sessions were also broadcasted (with the consent of visitors).

Through Audio Placebo Place, we explore and develop methods for sound and music that propose emotional labor, listening, collaboration and “music as repair” (see Suzanne Cusick, 2008) as key elements that shape the sonic-social encounter between artists and the public.

Can placebos help?
Does sound have the power to process complex emotions?
Can music give you what you need?
Is this even music?

The Montreal edition of Audio Placebo Plaza has been archived by Andy Stuhl at Wave Farm (NY, USA)
https://wavefarm.org/radio/archive/works/kdtgwn

We created a commemorative booklet for Audio Placebo Plaza: Montreal edition with writing by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
https://audioplaceboplaza.com/Publication

Credits

Audio Placebo Plaza is a community sound art project conceived by Julia E Dyck, Erin Gee and Vivian Li .

Graphic design by Sultana Bambino.

Gallery

Audio Placebo Plaza Montreal Poster

In November 2022 Audio Placebo Plaza traveled to Karachi Pakistan as part of the Karachi Biennale.

Audio Placebo Plaza (APP) is a female and non-gender conforming collective of artists (Julia E. Dyck, Erin Gee, Vivian Li) focused on the expansion of intersectional feminist methods of care, emotional labor, collaboration, and community in sound art. APP considers “placebo” as a complex, open-ended, and optimistic conceptual framework for work that embraces irony, play, and co-performativity in psychosomatic sound art. Through performance and interactivity, APP engages with community members to discuss these topics, creating original audio artworks based on conversations in our healing space. We offer everyday people customized positive messages, audio creations, healing frequencies, binaural beats, and ASMR, responding to the needs of our community through a practice of radical sonic care. We promise our fullest intention.
https://audioplaceboplaza.com/

You can listen to the albums from the Montreal edition and the Karachi edition here:
https://audioplaceboplaza.bandcamp.com/

Audio Placebo Plaza – Pillow Talk Radio
https://www.instagram.com/p/CucUFrboaoU/?img_index=1

 

Press

https://www.thenews.com.pk/magazine/you/1014017-visionary-women

https://mmnews.tv/here-are-artworks-you-must-visit-at-karachi-biennale-2022/

https://www.dawn.com/news/1717389/3rd-karachi-biennale-promises-interesting-display-of-artistic-talent

https://www.thenews.com.pk/magazine/us/1008137-karachi-biennale-2022-where-art-meets-technology

https://www.arabnews.pk/node/2191651/lifestyle

https://thekarachicollective.com/on-coevolution-and-the-spaces-we-build-for-ourselves-dialog-on-kb22/?fbclid=IwAR2IVRyA719mOdAwV4wHo2RIma45pJugdHywE9JAvD7wAc6hffvRx03g1ww

Credits

Audio Placebo Plaza is a community sound art project conceived by Julia E Dyck, Erin Gee and Vivian Li .

Graphic design by Sultana Bambino.

Gallery

Audio Placebo Plaza Karachi

Eastern Bloc Montreal

01.08.2018 , Exhibitions, News

Eastern Bloc

7240 Clark, Montreal

October 3-26, 2018

GALLERY HOURS

  • Wed to Fri | 16.00 – 19.00
  • Sat – Sun | 13.00 – 17.00

Curators: Martín Rodríguez (Co-Director) & Éliane Ellbogen (Former Artistic Director and Founder of Eastern Bloc)

“Amplification”, in its figurative and literal sense, is the act of making something more marked or enhanced, on the one hand, and the process of increasing the amplitude of an electrical signal, on the other. Amplification of both artists’ careers and art practices is what Eastern Bloc strives towards in its programming. It is what prompted the centre to curate a retrospective exhibit featuring the work of artists with whom we have closely collaborated over the past ten years, who are not so emerging anymore, but who inspire us to continue amplifying the work of younger, more emerging artists.

The artists exhibited in “Amplification” form an important part of the digital arts landscape in Canada. Many of them exhibited in group or solo shows for the first time at Eastern Bloc, while others were presented by the centre at a formative stage in their career. They have all, over the past decade, developed a strong bond with the centre and have contributed to strengthening and “amplifying” the community of Canadian and international digital artists.

The exhibiting artists were invited to create a work inspired by the work of ten pioneering Canadian New Media artists.

Erin Gee created work inspired by Cheryl L’hirondelle; Darsha Hewitt by Doug Back; Sofian Audry by Monty Cantsin?; Craig Fahner and Matthew Waddell by Catherine Richards; Adam Basanta by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller; Jennifer Chan by Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby; Sabrina Ratté and Roger Tellier-Craig by Jean-Pierre Boyer; and Erin Sexton by Michael Snow. Eleven emerging and mid-career artists have, as such, created a body of work that represents a “living archive” of Eastern Bloc. The work exhibited in Amplification delves into and revises the history of New Media art in Canada, as seen through the perspective of a new generation of Canadian artists. Amplification is Eastern Bloc’s contribution to the past, present, and future of digital arts in Montreal and in Canada.