Statement on Creative Research

*Documentation of creative research is available at www.creativeresearchportfolio.weebly.com*

Since arriving at Texas Tech University, my creative research in theatre, performance art, and sound art has adopted a
variety of formats. Sometimes I perform alone (as in the video Listen 2 Me Work and sound piece General Equivalence)
and sometimes with a collaborator (as in 24-Hour Confession). Sometimes I work with appropriated sound (Boy Fails to
Confront the Indignity of Death But Its OK) or computer-generated speech (hashtagconfession). My voice has been
processed (24-Hour Confession), untreated (Polaris: Porsgrunn), and obstructed by a mouthful of marshmallows (Bedtime
Ritual for Suffragettes). Audiences have been invited to listen to prerecorded voices through a door (hashtagconfession),
through car radios inside parked cars (General Equivalence), and through headphones attached to a tape player (Boy Fails
to Confront the Indignity of Death But Its OK). Sometimes, they are asked to participate (24-Hour Confession and Polaris:
Porsgrunn), other times, just to listen and watch (Swan Divin Into a Tub of Scratch). In the past three and a half years, my
work has been shown in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Norway, and the US (Colorado, New York, Oregon, Texas,
Washington, and Wisconsin). I have upcoming exhibitions/performances in Taipei and San Francisco. My international
exhibition record in medium-specific and intermedia production, engagement with arts and media theory, and
experience doing both solo and collaborative work serve the unique needs of the Fine Arts Doctoral Program.

Despite the formal diversity of my creative output, my practice is motivated by two primary concerns: 1) the role of voice
and speech in performing emotion, identity, and labor, and 2) the dramaturgy of various modes of public address, from
YouTube rants to academic lectures, from Twitter confessions to celebrity apologies to museum audio tours. The
consideration I usually give to vocal production has been influenced by two developing scholarly research projectsone on
the gendered voice and affective labor, the other on sound arts fixation on vocal pathology (see my Statement on
Scholarly Research)as well as the interests of my own students, many of whom are choral conductors, musicologists, and
musical theatre performers.

Much of my work highlights the tension between the predetermined (the scripted, scored, or recorded) and the
spontaneous, tension that also characterizes performances of everyday life, to use terminology from the field of
performance studies. For Swan Divin Into a Tub of Scratch (Compliance Division gallery in Portland, Oregon), a solo
exhibition and hybrid lecture/spoken word piece about the nature of money in the information age, I invited musicians
who manipulate sampled sounds to perform with me. The soundscape of the performance included their samples and
instrumental sounds, my live speech (with improvised rhythms, tempos, and pitches), and my prerecorded voice on a
record I had pressed especially for the event. Swan Divin staged the negotiation between the fixed and the unfixed in
ways that were audible to audiences familiar with sampling practices in popular music. I will be engaging with similar
thematic material for a collaborative sound performance in Taipei for World Stage Design 2017, a competitive
international scenography exhibition held every four years (arguably, the penultimate scenography exhibition in the
world, second only to the Prague Quadrennial, where I have also exhibited). This event will not only provide an unusually
international audience, but also immerse me and my collaborator within a world of cutting-edge scenic, lighting, prop,
projection, and sound design. I will integrate what I learn into my courses, especially my doctoral seminar Technology and
the Arts and Colloquium on Interdisciplinarity.

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Other characteristic attributes of my live performances are repetition and lengthy duration. In a relevant review of my
performance art piece 4-Hour Confession (a collaboration with Seth Warren-Crow) at Counterpath Gallery in Denver, Tyler
Atwood explains, The repetition that occurs in the course of their four hour performanceis reminiscent of both the
distortion that occurs in the 24-hour news cycle, and the distortion that occurs in attempting to place deleterious actions in
a context that justifies themThe variegation of [Heathers] vocal patterns reminded me of the multiplicity of methods
media have developed to foster a lasting impression, embedding such minutiae deep within our psyches.1 Atwoods
observation is even more applicable to the day-long version of the piece, 24-Hour Confession, performed at Glasshouse
gallery in Brooklyn, NY.

Much of my work attempts to reveal the ways in which the rhythmic automaticity of media has invaded our private spaces
and the most intimate aspects of our bodies and identities. For example, for my sound art piece General Equivalence, or
Pillow Talk for the Olfactorily Impaired Worker, listeners at PNEM Festival of Sound Art accessed the piece inside parked
cars; when determining the appropriate listening arrangement, I considered the role of mobile media technology in
transforming spaces of leisure into spaces of labor, turning the car into another office. General Equivalence was created as
a response to both the history of Muzak (which was originally developed to manage the productivity and emotions of
factory workers) and a recent study claiming that the odor of money increases the efficiency of the assembly line. In
preparation for the piece (a process I consider part of the performance), I collected and collated all references to the smell
of money from Google Books and later read them aloud over a Muzak-style soundtrack. While my vocal repetition and
timbre recall self-help audio tapes (which share something of the original Muzaks aim alternately to energize and to
soothe), the strange textual content makes the piece uncomfortable, emphasizing the uncanniness of money, itself.

Although most of my current creative work is sound art and performance art, I also make design-oriented theatre. With
Seth Warren-Crow, I devised Polaris: Porsgrunn, which was chosen by competition to be part of the Porsgrunn
International Theatre Festival in Norway in 2015. Polaris: Porgsrunn explores the ideas of Norwegian physicist Kristian
Birkeland (1867-1917), whose explanation of the aurora borealis was ahead of its time. Birkeland's attempts to convince
others that the sun causes auroral phenomena are reminiscent of 21st century discussions regarding climate change,
which also require that humans think about causation at a distance and across scale (at our invitation, a Norwegian climate
change advocate/climatologist attended the performance and joined in the post-show discussion). Playfully invoking the
format of the public science lecture, which Birkeland used to generate buzz and encourage financial investment in his
endeavors, the piece combines spoken text appropriated from Birkelands scientific treatises, projected hand-drawn
diagrams, and sound-making "experiments" with unusual instruments, such as metal detectors and aluminum cans.
Polaris: Porsgrunn was lit primarily by audience members using handheld lights we provided. A particularly unusual
flashlight from the performance, in combination with a written explanation addressing audience response to the
interactive elements, was later exhibited at the Nova Sin gallery as part of the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design
and Space, the most prestigious scenography exhibition in the world.

My investment in theatrical objects is longstanding, as I previously worked as a puppet, prop, and scenic designer.
Reviving my interest in performing objects, I conducted two puppeteering workshops with students here in the School of

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Atwood, Tyler, Tyler Atwood Reviews Warren-Crow + Warren-Crows 4-Hour Confession (Pity Party #2) at Counterpath May 10,
2014, Counterpath Press, May 21, 2014, http://counterpathpress.blogspot.com/2014/05/tyler-atwood-reviews-warren-
crowwarren.html.

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Theatre and Danceone to train performers for a production of the musical Avenue Q, and another as part of an
independent study with a doctoral student who is going to Prague to work with puppeteers. My facility with the material
and immaterial aspects of performance is proving useful for my job as mentor for the School of Theatre and Dances Marfa
Project, a devised theatre experiment with Texas Tech University Theatre and Art students in Marfa, Texas (see my
Statement on Service).

A current project, the creation of a commissioned experimental audio tour of the Museum of Performance + Design in San
Francisco, requires I call upon my varied experiences as both a sound artist and theatre maker. Earmark is a collaboration
with Seth Warren-Crow that will be installed in June of 2017. During a residency in January of 2017, we conducted
research on the theatre and dance holdings of the Museum, which has a collection of 3.5 million items related to the
histories of theatre, dance, and music in the Bay Area. Integrating audio clips from archived media with binaural field
recordings of the urban environment and strange descriptions voiced by the tour guide (performed and written by me),
Earmark is concerned with the ephemerality of live events and the materiality of the media that preserve them for
posterity. The project also requires that we think deeply about the ways in which the format of the museum audio tour,
including both the hardware involved and the manner in which tours structure audition, direct visitors physical energy,
manage their attention, and perform particular arrangements of power. I received a $5,000 competitive internal grant
from the College of Visual and Performing Arts to support this project.

The Fine Arts Doctoral Program puts unusual demands on its faculty who teach the interdisciplinary courses. Meeting the
needs of students with such varied backgrounds, interests, and career goalsand fostering a collaborative community in
the classroomcan be challenging. Many of my students return to get their doctorate after a sizable career practicing (and
sometimes, teaching) their chosen art form, entering the program knowing the highly specialized language of their field
but not the terminology or history of other art practices. Many are expert art practitioners who have little background in
theories of their own art form. My profile as both a scholar and practitioner, as well as my thoughtful approach to the
relationship between the two, supports the work I do with doctoral student practitioners. Moreover, my extensive
experience with artistic collaboration helps me provide practical advice concerning best practices for working across artistic
disciplines.