California Scenario (2019)
This is a video companion piece to the creative nonfiction set of essays for Noise and Silence Magazine as well as an abstract trailer for the California Scenario album.
a puddle of oil by the dairy queen (2017)
This project combined video and sound recorded in Huntington Beach, California with a Max MSP/Jitter Patch that allows for improvised reactions to the footage. The video and sounds are triggered with an Akai MPD controller and a Yamaha VSS-30 which contains a human whistle sample.
Linger Longer (2014)
This project uses the lobby of 31 S. Court St in Athens, Ohio to explore the aesthetics of waiting. The nondescript furniture of waiting rooms, extreme volumes of doorways being slammed shut, and the comforting tones of background music will be used as tools to explore what it means to purposefully linger in these transitional zones. This theme is investigated through a quilting of musical pieces playing with and against each other, a free six-page pamphlet exploring the benefits of background music and its history (with special sections dedicated to listening and exercises to further one’s sense of well-being), and two exotic light sculptures to stir the imagination. Participants are invited to attend to the aesthetics of waiting through active mind/body immersion. The crystallized participatory experience opens room to ask questions like: What can be learned from staring at mass-produced, semi-comfortable pleather chairs? How is sound inter/intratextual? What happens when we purposefully demobilize the self in a temporary zone?
Spatial Topologies (2014)
This lecture-demonstration gives a glimpse into an experience as part of an interdisciplinary exhibition on the theme of topology at the Majestic Gallery in Nelsonville, Ohio. Topology concerns itself with constant aspects of continually changing shapes. In order to explore these constants, I chose to amplify performative aspects of sonic (re)presentation, 3D imaging and printing, and the desktop environment itself. A crude blueprint of the Majestic Gallery served as a launchpad to listen to dialogues between consistency and change. These processes shifted perspectives on my own identity as a musician-scholar, giving way to a series of questions: What is artistic license? Are learning curves unavoidable? Are 3D printer scraps worth anything? How does misuse of software/hardware give way to productive (mis)representations? What are the sounds of a sound creative practice? This presentation will continue the project of augmenting space by sounding out the back-and-forths and inbetweens of scholarship and artistic practice. The sounds of the 3D printer, artist statements, melting and crushing 3D models, streams of questions, and the micro-harmonies of the desktop environment will act in concert, stretching open space for new conversations within the Digital Humanities.
Josh Ottum 