Sound::Connection( Play )

02.04.2022

A pop-up exhibition
Feb 4-25, 2022
Showing at Breck Create's Old Masonic Hall, downtown Breckenridge, Colorado

Our current era provides fewer opportunities to encounter playful spaces and experience the benefits they provide. Sound::Connection( Play ) invites visitors to engage multiple senses and frames the act of play as vital to social connection and emotional health. Two installations by artist Justin Gitlin, titled Swell and Communichords, use motion-activated cameras to transmute movement into images, light, and sound. Visitors control the input that Gitlin’s software transforms into output, creating a shared experience that bridges the distance between artist and public. Extending beyond the gallery, Sound::Connection( Play ) also features digital art projections from different points in Gitlin’s career on the exterior of Old Masonic Hall. The dynamic time capsule records the artist’s own playful pursuits over the years.

Whether used to play music or simply play, the works in Sound::Connection( Play ) encourage people to inhabit space and move their bodies differently than is socially prescribed, calling into question why such norms exist. In a gallery setting this line of questioning acquires additional meaning, as gallery and museum spaces have historically restricted human behavior and excluded some forms of participation. The title of the exhibition references computer code used to produce Swell and Communichords. Play is the input, Sound is the vehicle, and Connection is the desired function of the custom software that powers both installations.

Justin Gitlin (aka Cacheflowe) is a lifelong musician and career software developer based in Denver and Boston. His work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian, Denver Art Museum, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, MCA Denver, Dateline Gallery, and Monkey Town 4. Gitlin has created several light-based, interactive musical sculptures that invite visitors to collaboratively create music with their bodies. Swell was first slated for BreckCreate’s 2020 WAVE Festival; instead, an abridged version became an integral part of the 2021 Airstage concerts. Adaptation of the work comes full circle in Sound::Connection( Play ).

- Breck Create

Swell

Swell (Interaction)

Communichords

Loops (Compiled)