Retrieving Humanity is Born

The first Retrieving Humanity meeting. The seed of the idea that eventually became Retrieving Humanity was probably planted one day back in Spring 2008 when I (Jason Goodyear) went out to breakfast with Peter Joseph. After the conversation turned to art and audio, we started throwing around the idea of putting microphones around town and “mixing” Santa Fe. It sounded like a load of fun and a load of work and we never revisited the idea. About a year later, I met Ethan Bach. We didn’t go out to breakfast, we went out to dinner and when we got to the “throwing ideas around” part, I mentioned the concept Peter and I had briefly discussed. Ethan promptly said, “It needs video.”

At this first meeting, Ethan, Peter and I were all in attendance. The point of this first meeting was to sort of lay the idea of the piece out on the table in both a physical and conceptual sense. To discuss the what and why of Retrieving Humanity and to consider why it seemed to be important to us. Some things that came out of this discussion were:

- We see the piece as being realized as an installation with a number of computers connected over the internet to various locations around the world.

- We are creating an infrastructure for people to experience the world in a personal way that has been made possible by new technologies.

- This infrastructure will allow people to experience connectedness with other places and other cultures, both familiar and unfamiliar.

- One of the primary concepts of the piece is that of crossing divides and breaking down barriers. To enable the audience to explore this idea fully, we will be employing interactive technology which will make it easy for the individual to participate. An important part of the experience of the piece removing the artificial divide between audience and performer.

- In addition to the individual sound and video at the individual terminals, we will be doing a mix of the content that will be played over a sound system and projected on a large screen.

- We all like the idea of the content streaming in from around the being less performance-based and more everyday experience. That being said, the decision of what the content will consist of should be left up to the remote participants. If we want people to experience an everyday moment in Malaysia, best to let a Malaysian decide what it should be.