Hot Milks @MFA: Partition

Vibrating benches for an embodied experience

How does bodily communication connect us when words cannot?  The body knows so much. Inaudible infrasound communication <20 Hz is a method of communication throughout the animal kingdom, and infrasound vibration is known to have pronounced emotional effects on humans. What can vibrations shake loose within us?

The Hot Milks Foundation is composed of Students and Alums from the MIT Media Lab, we create performance pieces commissioned by the Boston MFA. For our piece called Partition, we installed two vibrating benches that translate audible frequencies into inaudible ones to transform voices, secrets, purring and heart beats into vibrations for an embodied experience. This Boston MFA show folds this nascent science question into a question of relation and experience, to audience and one another. How to make each other feel.

Sit on the bench and be shaken by a heartbeat. By laughter, and sobbing, and Beyoncé’s Partition. DJ orgasms. Sit across from a lover or a stranger, and whisper secrets into the microphone, translated into vibrations. Let them feel what you cannot bring yourself to say to them. Make them feel.

Many thanks to Council for the Arts at MIT for supporting us.

Collaborators

The Hot Milks Foundation (Adam Horowitz, Xin Liu, Gershon Dublon, Akito Von Troyer, Sands Fish, and Rainar Aasrand)

Date

December 2016

Piece commissioned by

Boston Museum of Fine Art