Spambot Sound Tapestries by Jess Rowland is an interactive sound installation/composition for audio tapestries which explores the hidden world of automated spam – endlessly loquacious, notably absurd, virtually inexhaustible. Giving voice to the spambots, the sound tapestries act as a medium through which these abstract creations and sound itself become materialized. These automated processes are placed in relation to human interaction – the mix of automated language, emerging sound technology, and unpredictable intuitive human behavior.
This work is a distributed multichannel sound installation using non-traditional flat flexible speaker arrays, surfaces for sound creation which are built into visual designs. By exploring these unexpected sound sources, participants are invited to shape the sounds themselves through movement in the space.
Exploring the space between technologies, popular culture, and other absurdities, the Spambot music consists of found material of text to speech spambots from spam email folders, rearranged, cut-up, and recontextualized.
Opening from May 22 through July 20 2015
Nolan Park Building 5a5b, Governors Island, NY
Bio
Jess Rowland is a sound artist, musician, and composer currently represented by Edgetone Records. She has received artist residencies at Harvestworks Digital Media Center and Kala Arts, composition grants from the American Composers Forum, commissions by theater and modern dance companies, and has been affiliated with the Center for New Music and Audio Technology at UC Berkeley. Much of her work explores the relationship between technologies, popular culture, and other absurdities. In addition to recent performances at the Berkeley Art Museum, Luggage Store Gallery, Spectrum NYC, and 10 Thousand Poets for Change, she has published a paper focusing on some of her current Sound Art concerns in the Leonardo Music Journal.
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