Annie Saunders and Duncan Woodbury discuss the experience of working on live performances of durational underwater installation HOLOSCENES, in which Saunders performs (and has creatively collaborated on and developed the work since 2012) and Woodbury does live sound design, engineering and mixing. HOLOSCENES premiered with 12 hours of durational performance during the overnight Scotiabank Nuit Blanche Festival in Toronto in October 2014, and has since been exhibited in various international locations, including Times Square. HOLOSCENES features a single totemic, aquarium-like sculpture sited in public space, standing thirteen feet tall and viewable from 360 degrees. The sculpture is a vehicle for performance. Inhabited by a single performer at any one time, the aquarium is animated by a powerful custom hydraulic system that pumps up to 15 tons of water in and out in less than a minute, creating a series of mini-floods to which the performers must adapt. HOLOSCENES re-imagines historical antecedents of public spectacle and gathering, and simultaneously translates related streams of scientific investigation into a visual, visceral, and public address in urban communal space that challenges our personal and collective capacities for long-term thinking and empathy.

Annie Saunders is a multidisciplinary creator and director of site-specific experiences, and has created award-winning multi-platform projects for major arts institutions including The Los Angeles Philharmonic, as well as site-specific projects in disused spaces set for demolition and experiential campaigns for multinational brands. Her site-specific audio piece CURRENT (with Andrew Schneider and Jackie! Zhou and OTB) won the Tribeca Festival's Best Immersive Creative Nonfiction, and her installation The Home (also with Jackie! Zhou) received an Honorary Mention in Sound Art from Ars Electronica, a D&AD Yellow Pencil (Creative Excellence; Spatial and Installation Design) and UK APA awards for Best Experiential Project and Best Use of Technology for Good. She is a member of the inaugural ONX Studio (NEW INC/Onassis Foundation), and an alumnus of the Devised Theater Working Group at the Public Theater. Saunders is the founder and artistic director of site-specific performance company Wilderness, and her experimental project The Wreck for Opera Omaha was called ‘ingenious...a persuasive expression of complex female feeling,’ by the Wall Street Journal.

Her most recent site-and-time-specific audio work, Kormós, created with Andrew Schneider and Emma O'Halloran, is currently running (summer 2022) as part of the Plásmata exhibition with the Onassis Foundation in Athens.

Duncan Woodbury is a sound engineer, designer, and composer based in Los Angeles. Guided by a lifetime of study and immersion in sound and music Duncan applies his craft in a range of creative projects including live and recorded music, theatre and dance, gallery installation, and podcasting.

Throughout his time in contemporary performance, Duncan has worked with Lars Jan and Early Morning Opera, Andrew Schneider, Poor Dog Group, and Milka Djorjevich. He has mixed in a wide array of venues including BAM Harvey & Fischer (BKNY), ICA (Boston), Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney), The Ford Amphitheatre (LA), The Theatre at Ace Hotel (LA), REDCAT (LA), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), and The Bootleg Theater (LA) to name a few.

As a musician, Duncan creates work under the moniker Mayacamas. He is a graduate of California Institute of the Arts.

Credits:

To read more about Holoscenes, visit this link

Created and Produced by Early Morning Opera / Lars Jan

Conceived and Directed by Lars Jan

Choreographed by Geoff Sobelle

Performed by Benjamin Kamino + Emmanuelle Martin + Annie Saunders + Geoff Sobelle

Show Control and Lighting Design Pablo N. Molina

Sound Design Nathan Ruyle, Mikaal Sulaiman, and Duncan Woodbury

Sound Engineering Duncan Woodbury

Costume Design Irina Kruzhilina

Technical Director Eric Lin

Project Manager Christopher Pye

Company Manager Alexandria Yalj

Hydraulic Design Larry McDonald

Automation Design Erich Bolton

Created with the support of Robert Rauschenberg Foundation + MAP Fund + Surdna Foundation (New York) + NEA