Performer Guillermo Galindo is an experimental music composer, sonic architect, performance artist, and visual media artist. Galindo's work bends conventional boundaries between music, composition, and connects the arts, politics, humanitarian issues, spirituality, and social awareness. Remote Control is a sonic representation of an alternative reality. The work is performed by renowned string quartet ETHEL and accompanied by a digital soundtrack played by members of the audience through their cell phones, tablets, or any other audio or audiovisual playback devices available. Just like a video game, the performance is a virtual rendition of a video war game. The work meditates on the ways that our physical experience of the world is increasingly mediated through screens. In particular, the work uses sounds taken from war video games to emphasize how remote controlled and drone warfare separates soldiers from the physical experience of a battlefield. In tandem, the work considers the history of epic music in warfare, from military bands marching alongside infantry, to Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries being played through airplane speakers during the Vietnam War, to the use of sonic cannons to break up protests, particularly the Water Protector civilians at the Standing Rock protest. Start times: 8:30pm, 9pm
New York City, NY; NYC