Gabriel Gekoskie

Measuring The Ocean With a Teaspoon (2022)

The goal of this installation is to question an individual’s role in making and recalling memories. The title stems directly from the composer’s inability to recall memory perfectly or at the right times. Measuring The Ocean With a Teaspoon (hereafter MTOWT) reorganizes sounds that an audience might have heard prior to the installation and tampers with the chronological order, duration, and distortion of said sounds. This represents the individual’s back seat in memory creation and directs the audience toward a realization that a larger entity directs memory creation.

The installation will record audio from an acoustic performance and upload said audio into the installation program. The installation will include ultrasonic sensors to detect motion from the audience leaving a performance venue or entering it, contributing to the group's participation in creating memories. MTOWT also requires a live microphone feed to trigger convolution between live audio and recorded audio, further alluding to the new encoding of memory by a large entity (the audience).

This installation is not site-specific and can be fully operational during the intermission of, or following an acoustic performance.