In Conversation: Antonia Barnett-McIntosh & Jessie Marino

In this talk and open studio, composer-performers Antonia Barnett-McIntosh and Jessie Marino present an intimate look into their individual practices and discuss their recent work as Artists-in-Residence on their new collaboration Susceptible Chambers. Taking place amidst their workspace in Studio 1, attendees will have the opportunity to learn about an EMPAC commission in development directly from the artists.

Antonia and Jessie use elements of the mundane and quotidian as generative ways to disrupt traditional musical forms and performance practices. In Susceptible Chambers, Antonia and Jessie bring this sense of play to one of the foundational instruments of electronic music: the microphone.

Susceptible Chambers is an extension of Antonia and Jessie’s Extended Microphones Project (EMP), a sound-based research, development, and performance project in which the typical structure of a simple microphone is prepared using alternative materials. What would it sound like to embed a microphone capsule inside a terracotta pot with a grid made from dried-out pine cones? Or to cast a microphone enclosure completely out of agar-agar (a vegan alternative to gelatin)?

EMP will fabricate sonic relationships between home-built microphones, the objects they will amplify, and the speakers that disseminate this aural symbiosis into a network of analog sculptural filters which draw aural focus to unexpected features of the physical space.

Antonia and Jessie began work on Susceptible Chambers at EMPAC in August 2023 and will return for a final residency in March 2024, culminating in a premiere performance and installation in April 2024.

Work-in-progress events offer a window into the research, development, and production of new works by artists in residence at EMPAC. These free events open up a dialogue between our audiences, artists, and EMPAC staff.