Join us tomorrow for an artist talk and reception featuring sound performance artist Mark Dixon of Invisible. The performance will be later that evening at 7pm in the Nelson Music Room on East Campus.

3-4pm, Artist Talk and Reception, The Garage, Bay 4, Smith Warehouse

7-8:30, Performance and Q&A, Nelson Music Room, Duke East Campus

Invisible is a sound art performance project featuring sculptural sound making devices invented by Mark Dixon. Invisible is based in Greensboro, NC and has been performing regionally since 2006. More information on Invisible may be found here: https://www.soundsinvisible.com/

Mark Dixon is an object maker, reverse engineer, machine acupuncturist, and career counselor for unemployed appliances. He designs and builds the sculptural sound making devices for Invisible. He has an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University and is an Assistant Professor of Art at Guilford College.

Time Constraints: In the future… there are no moving parts. In the future… sound is invisible. In the future… djembes have LCD screens.

But for a limited time only–while supplies last–Invisible offers Time Constraints, a late mechanical age crescendo of parts, labor, springs, friction and disapproved electronic devices. With Time Constraints, Invisible fantasizes a future for Leon Theremin’s 1931 Rhythmicon and a hundred other ambitious non-starters that put the MACHINE in drum machine. The performance is a conversation between two of Invisible’s inventions, machines that mark time in very different ways. The first, Rhythm 1001, is a sprawling drum machine that controls percussion via bamboo pegs placed in a revolving disk. The looping disk of Rhythm 1001 creates complex 4/4 patterns familiar in concept but articulated by dozens of electromechanical percussion contraptions. The other machine, Elsewhere’s Roof, controls similar sound contraptions using dripping water as its signal source. Because dripping water is far less predictable, Elsewhere’s Roof rhythms are asynchronous and never repeating.