A Technology Lament - Performance Piece

A Technology Lament was an improvised performance presented as part of The Only Way Out Is Through, the 2025 UMBC MFA Thesis Exhibition, within my installation The Dead, The Living, and The Injured at the CADVC.

 

Developed through ongoing collaborations with musicians and alum of the UMBC Improv Ensemble, the performance centers on a discarded Dynex monitor and the act of giving care to obsolete technology. Musicians responded in real time to the monitor’s presence, creating a live soundtrack of sound, breath, and intention. Simultaneously, I improvised live video on CRT monitors within the exhibition and read aloud the names of all the devices that have “died” in my care—offering them a form of burial that acknowledges both the objects themselves and the broader systems of technology we continue to use. It was a consistent interaction between video, music, and the obsolete devices in the area and exhibition.

 

The audience did not know they were part of a procession until the end, when the monitor was carried to the courtyard. This was not a spectacle, but a gesture—a small ceremony of attention and refusal in the face of disposability. Every Dead piece of technology deserves equal rights to a form digital or physical burial.

 

Musicians:

Patrick Crossland

Ida Dierker

Brandon Gouin

Jeremy Keaton

Josh Webb