i/o

i/o is a live art piece that fuses sound installation, physical theatre, and opera to explore how people and machines co-exist today.

Six performers on wireless microphones are paired with six human-scale loudspeakers on stands, networked together via a computer program. Using voice recognition, the loudspeakers actually respond to the vocal gestures input by the performers, creating a dynamic feedback loop between the two. The sung, spoken, and physical gestures make up small vocabularies that are constantly reconfigured, delayed, and spatially multiplied, to generate a disorienting and hypnotic complexity from the simplest means.

The piece is conceived as a suite of sonic / choreographic movements, each with a radically different spatial arrangement:  a traditional proscenium, a large circle surrounding the audience, a small square inside the audience, a wall in front of the audience, and randomly dispersed through the performance space.  Each configuration – simply defined by a new arrangement of the performers and loudspeakers – invites the audience to arrange and define themselves in relation to the piece and each other.  Thus, choosing where to stand, what to see, and how to receive i/o becomes an integral part of the experience.

The 12nineteen Library

The subject of the 12nineteen Library is one minute of time. All information presented in the installation is a result of the observation of one minute, from 12:19 to 12:20 PM. The observers are global. Their submissions are in the form of audio recordings, photographs, written descriptions and video files collected over the internet and then exhibited in the museum space. The massive accumulation of these observations allows visitors to the installation to engage the infinity of human experience captured in these minute long observations.  The 12nineteen Library was first presented at The Austin Museum of Art in association with Fusebox Festival, April 2009. The exhibition will continue to grow and accumulate 12:19 information at each museum or gallery where it is installed.

2009 Austin Critics Table Award.

MORE OR LESS INFINITY

Is the third part of a trilogy about space and the second collaboration between Phil Soltanoff and CIE 111. The subject of MORE OR LESS INFINITY is the line. It premiered at Vidy Theatre in Lausanne, Switzerland in late September 2005. It has performed throughout Europe including Kampnagel, BITEF, Theatre de la Ville, TNT and Pina Bausch's NRW International Dance Festival in Dusseldorf.

For more information: contact@CIE111.com.

PLAN B

Directed by Phil Soltanoff in collaboration with Compagnie 111 of Toulouse, France. It features 4 juggler/acrobats and a basic geometric element — a plane. PLAN B premiered at Theatre Garonne in January 2003 and is currently on tour throughout Europe and Asia. It premiered at the New Victory Theatre, NYC in October, 2004.

For more information: contact@CIE111.com.