Annihilation Symphony

This paper supports my thesis exhibition, Annihilation Symphony, displayed at York University’s Gales Gallery. Annihilation Symphony is a multi-sensorial installation, using guitar amplification equipment, CRT televisions, video, and stringed sculpture to probe the potential of an artwork to affect the viewer’s body/mind. It creates an interactive work which will use volume, space, imagery, and participation to stimulate atypical states of consciousness in the spectator. Feedback, as both sonic/visual phenomena and as a concept in nostalgia and cybernetics, is the center of the project, which features feedback from high-volume guitar amplifiers and closed-circuit video. Each formal component of the installation is explored through its respective grounding in my research in topics ranging from drone metal, 20th century video art, and consumption in capitalist society. The project also examines post-war cybernetics’ ascendence to cultural hegemony, the control of how the past is presented, and the potential still held in history’s lost dreams.