Without Walls by ELKA BONG

“The new media and technologies by which we amplify and extend ourselves constitute huge collective surgery carried out on the social body with complete disregard for antiseptics. If the operations are needed, the inevitability of infecting the whole system during the operations has to be considered. For in operating on society with new technology, it is not the incised area that is most affected. The The area of impact and incision is numb. It is the entire system that is changed. The effect of radio is visual, the effect of the photo is auditory. Each new impact shifts the ratios among all the senses. What we seek today is either a means of controlling these shifts in the sense-ratios of the psychic and social outlook, or a means of avoiding them altogether. To have a disease without its symptoms is to be immune. No society has ever known enough about its actions to have developed immunity to its new extensions or technologies. Today we have begun to sense that art may be able to provide such immunity.

“The ability of the artist to sidestep the bully blow of new technology of any age, and to parry such violence with full awareness, is age-old. Equally age-old is the inability of the percussed victims, who cannot sidestep the new violence, to recognize their need of the artist. To reward and to make celebrities of artists can, also, be a way of ignoring their prophetic work, and preventing its timely use for survival. The artist is the person in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of their actions and of new knowledge in their own time. They are the persons of integral awareness.”
~ Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, pages 70-71

Tracklist

1.	An Eye for an Ear	10:11

2.	Our Extended Skin	10:09

3.	The Scent of Time	10:19

4.	The Mechanical Bride	10:30

Credits

released November 25, 2023

Al Margolis - transformations [1], trumpet [2[, guitar with objects [3], alto clarinets [4]
Walter Wright - IFM Synth
with
Sara Bouchard - live coded media [1-4], voice [1-3], field recordings [3], aluminum foil [4]

Sara Bouchard is a multidisciplinary artist and composer who uses sound, installation, works on paper and performance to interweave song, history and the landscape. She is currently based in Richmond, VA, where she teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts.

Born in Stockton, CA, Sara received her BA in painting from Yale University in 2003. She was subsequently based in Brooklyn, NY, for 13 years where she embedded herself in her local community through socially engaged art practices and American roots music. In 2017 she relocated to Richmond, VA, to study with sound artist Stephen Vitiello, receiving her MFA from VCUarts in 2019.

Sara has exhibited internationally, including at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, CT, The Center for Book Arts NYC. and in the Berlin Underground, Germany. She has performed extensively, including at The International Conference for Live Coding, Utrecht, Netherlands, The American Folk Art Museum NYC and numerous festivals. Her work is in a growing number of public collections, including the Princeton University Library, NJ, and the University of Richmond Library, VA.

Album and track titles taken from McLuhan’s Understanding Media. Mixed by Al.

License