[FISEA’93] Artist Statement: Joshua Fried — Travelogue

Artist Statement

In TravelOgue the ephemeral nature of live performance and the static nature of recorded technology collide, interact and even become co-dependent. Travelogue is composed for two synchronized audio tape tracks and one live performer. Tape one, the musical accompaniment, is heard only by the audience. Tape two, which contains various vocal sounds, is heard (via headphones) only by the performer. The performer has never heard these sounds before, and yet the performer is asked to imitate exactly what she or he hears on the headphones – with every word and expression intact, and the no lag time whatever. This last requirement makes the task quite impossible and the result produces abizarre unknown language. A person can perform Travelogue only once.

The title refers to feelings of dislocation, alienation, exhilaration and despair often experienced by travelers – and everyone, else for that matter, at one time or another in their life.
Travelogue is not “low-tech” (and patently not “high-tech”), but what one might call “structurally-tech.” By that is meant that fundamental to the composition is an exploration of the technology’s simplest and most basic functions and assumptions.

Travelogue asks, ‘just because multi track recording allow two things to be recorded in synch, must they then always be heard together? AND, can the two-way isolation afforded by the miracle of stereo headphones be used to musical and theatrical effect?”

With Monica Maye, voice & Joshua Fried, text and all instruments

  • Oshua Fried‘s music has been performed all over the U.S. and Europe. Fried collaborates in the fields of video, film, dance and performance ad and invented an electronic instrument, The Musical Shoe Tree. Select performances include the Bang On A Can  Festival, National Public Radio’s “New Sounds” Live ,the Knitting Factory La MaMa, ETC., ISCM’s World Music Days Warsaw 1992, and Het Apollohuis. Fried’s recording “Jimmy Because”, with guitarist Fred Frith, was released by Atlantic Records, Fried is credited as re-mix producer on dance records by Chaka Khan and “They Might Be Giants.” He co-arranged and co-produced Ofra Haza’s “lnta” from the album Desert Wind. Joshua Fried’s participation in FISEA’93 is made possible by the generous support of Harvestworks, Inc., Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.
  • Monica Maye is a singer, composer and performance artist who has been active in contemporary music since 1977. She has performed the music of numerous American composers as a soloist and as a performing member of LISTEN, an experimental vocal laboratory which she founded and directed from 1981 to 1989. She is currently on the faculty of Intermedia Arts Minnesota, where she teaches Sound for Media Arts, and is the director of The Body-Mind-Symphony, a chamber music ensemble devoted to exploring body-based musicianship.