Juraj Kojs: The Visitor (2014)

for six Hand Dryers and interactive sound

The Visitor is a 20-minute site-specific performance in which the main character (Juraj Kojs) visits three couples of Xlerator hand dryers, making them excite various everyday objects. The performance opens with Kojs singing a series of long-sustained poignant calls in Slovakian. Strolling through the space filled with the standing audience, his voice is electronically processed, creating a haunting chordal tapestries. Kojs ceremonially visits each pair of the hand-dryer characters, offering each of them a gift and making their turbulent air flow excite the gifts to produce unique sonic expressions. The grandfather receives a bottle of tequila, the grandmother a book, the mother a can with beans, father a pan flute and the two siblings a pair of painted balloons. The sounds produced by these objects are continuously processed by and recored into the computer, creating sonic memories-- sonic footsteps of the visited locations. The piece concludes when Kojs finds a performance location to position himself in a statuesque hand-dryer-like pose, while controlling the recorded sounds with the wireless sensor technologies mounted on his wrists. The performance is both funny and emotional. In it, Kojs contemplates the metonymic qualities of everyday objects, explores the unexpected sonic terrains and confronts the longing for formation of unique human-machine relationships.

Face stixcker design by Kawai Universe.

Sound Tech: Mariano Venini.

Premiere: March 15, 2014 at the Moore Building in Miami, FL.

 

	Images by J. Kojs and Kawai Universe.