Artists' Statement

In his essay “The Storyteller”,  Walter Benjamin contrasts storytelling, communication that relies solely on memory to information, which he defines as the communications of modernity. Our modern social memory is the bridge between these - shared experiences of communications from radio in the early twentieth century to social media and mobile devices on our own time. Tonight, we wish to evoke both - the history of the setting - the Bendix Building - with the temporal significance of November 9th as the symbolic end of the cold war.

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Communication can be accessible to only certain individuals or communities, due to encrypted signals, in-group symbols and signs, or lack of a common language. Tonight, using AI and XR, we are endeavoring to evoke meaning by peeling though the layers of meaning and memory present in place and time. These are rough sketches as we begin to explore this intersection of semiotics and social history through the lens of twenty-first century technologies.

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Finally, we look at movement and sound as a medium for storytelling - using information and memory together in Sara Sithi-Amnui's performance with Nami. For more information on Sara's work, please see https://www.calartsai.com/#/nami/