For more information, visit: http://www.newlanguages.org

 

Eyebeam has been a pioneer in collaborative art practices since it was founded 15 years ago.  This December, we’re inviting New Languages, an organization dedicated to improvised music, to stage a musical collaboration at a scale that would be unheard of at conventional music venues.  Starting at midnight on the night of December 7th, an ensemble composed of more than 70 musicians will come together to fashion an unbroken collective statement over 96 hours. In a world transformed by the internet and the resultant collapse of the record industry, live music is largely confined to the same sandbox as ever: 45 minute sets at small venues and festivals.

Music Factory interrogates the mode of musical production, looking for conditions that might serve the promise of improvised music in the 21st century. First, it is an experiment in continuous musical production at a single site: can creative music sustain the sort of working environment familiar to other industrial sectors? It performs this experiment for the emerging global audience of the internet: the performance will be broadcast live at newlanguages.org, where people will be able to discover and read more about new musicians as they listen. Finally, it will become a prototype of what an album can be in an era in which recordings no longer qualify as commodities. The performance will be made available in a browseable online interface, where people will be able to explore passages for years to come, like a cherished LP writ large.

The ensemble will be a distinctly American orchestra: an orchestra of free agents, bound not by the authority of a composer or conductor, but only by a willingness to trust one another, and take risks. The music they make will as much be the sound of cooperation as the result, and the menagerie of social dynamics usually experienced on a subliminal level will become the unifying thread of the concert.

Music Factory was instigated by Alan Sondheim, a prolific multidisciplinary artist whose music first appeared on ESPdisk in 1968 at the head of an improvising collective out of Providence. It was developed with Jackson Moore, who brings years of formative experience in the musical worlds of MacArthur genius Anthony Braxton, and brought to fruition by a production team assembled by Christopher Diasparra, a freelance musician and music label consultant. The project is rounded out by the curatorial work of Edward Schneider, organizer of the Holidays for the Future concert series at Sixteen Beaver, and Ty Cumbie, organizer of the Free Zone and Living Lab series.

The cost of admission is on a sliding scale: attendees can select their donation based on the extrapolated wage they wish the musical workers to receive. The de facto wage, based on the amount of money collected so far, will be displayed in real time, on site and online. The economic success of the factory and the remuneration of its workers will hinge on the value placed on it voluntarily by online viewers and real life visitors.