Dawn Kasper | Star Formation, 2016
Dawn Kasper’s Star Formation is a sculptural performance environment and improvised sound composition, including motion-activated motors attached directly to a field of cymbals on their stands. Kasper invites the audience to complete the work by moving through the installation. Each unique path through Star Formation creates the ever-changing musical composition allowing for no two experiences to be alike. With the viewer as performer, roles become reversed: the viewer’s body and movements become instruments of change that activate the cymbals to create a unique and individual sound composition.
With references as varied as Alan Watts (“Matter is a word, a noise, which refers to forms and patterns taken by a process.”) to Albert Einstein (and the chirping black holes recently heard by scientists proving his final general theory of relativity) to Seattle’s own history of music and technology, this work acts as its own self-contained constellation within the larger context of the fair. Star Formation also offers the viewer a way of hearing the universe instead of just seeing it.