The SonicFlux series of net-based works explores the ideas of artist-composers Steve Reich, John Cage, and Yoko Ono. Using scores (or "instruction sets"), these artists often invited the audience or viewer to suggest their own interpretation of a performance piece, an interactivity that characterized many Fluxus works. The series continues this tradition by offering visitors to the Walker's Web site a chance to work with artists' ideas in an interactive online environment.
In the first piece, participants create two circles of sound that, when rotated against one another, playfully demonstrate the "phase-shift" principle frequently used in Reich's compositions. The second work features a self-generating system of chance operations that allows participants to manipulate an unpredictable environment containing ideas, stories, sounds, and words from Cage's work. The third, based on Ono's Voice Piece for Soprano, prompts visitors to call a telephone number to hear instructions read by Ono, then provide their own interpretations of the work, which are recorded and represented online with other contributions in a graphically rendered temporal space.
In the first piece, participants create two circles of sound that, when rotated against one another, playfully demonstrate the "phase-shift" principle frequently used in Reich's compositions. The second work features a self-generating system of chance operations that allows participants to manipulate an unpredictable environment containing ideas, stories, sounds, and words from Cage's work. The third, based on Ono's Voice Piece for Soprano, prompts visitors to call a telephone number to hear instructions read by Ono, then provide their own interpretations of the work, which are recorded and represented online with other contributions in a graphically rendered temporal space.