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AV Lodge (2007)

On July 18, 2008, we presented the inaugural performance of seven parts of AV Lodge presents: Fruit Machine at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. The first four movie clips to the right are video documentation excerpts from that performance. If the clips take too long to load (they are fairly large) you can view smaller versions at our vimeo channel, www.vimeo.com/avlodge.

AV Lodge is the ongoing media performance project of Harp + Silver begun in 2007. Our first project is AV Lodge Presents: Fruit Machine. A ten-part, evening-length media performance, Fruit Machine, is a bawdy look at diverse sexualities. The parade of characters includes a life-sized toy robot; a dome-headed rabbit that uses his/her body as an instrument; and an androgynous punk rock bagpipe player. Each live act is followed by a related music video. In the live acts, costumes and props are wireless devices, which control custom audio-visual programs created in Max/MSP/Jitter, Processing and VDMX. The imagery: colorful, playful and humorous, uses the classic strategies of camp aesthetics to challenge hetero-normative assumptions.

One of the goals of Fruit Machine is to present an evening length media performance that uses limited means to transport the audience into a magical world of rich illusions and mutable genders. Combining sculptural controllers with live and pre-recorded sound and video, the performance creates a bridge between our daily physical world and the unbounded universe of the screen. All of the imagery references an animistic eroticism or the rampaging glee of unbounded id. The wish fulfillment of merging the real physical world and the screen-world is just another loosening of boundaries in a spectacle that celebrates desire’s myriad expressions.

Performance, Round The Coyote Festival, Curated by Abigail Satinsky, October 13, 2007