2009

multichannel audio, custom software

dimensions variable

total run time variable

 

For And Many More, variations of the song Happy Birthday were recorded from current and former employees of a dozen corporate chain restaurants (e.g., Olive Garden, TGI Fridays etc.) who either have sung, or today sing, proprietary birthday songs to customers celebrating their anniversaries. And Many More is an archive of sorts, as well as abstraction and remix. The listener, likely familiar with the original tune, might become estranged from it due to the formal qualities of the new ditties and their gradual fragmentation and distortion. This sonic play echoes the historical trajectory of the original Happy Birthday, from being a warm-and-fuzzy, almost universal and innocent expression of oral folk tradition to existing as a fragmented and market-strategic expression of commercial culture amidst stringent copyright protection. The audio generates in real-time and is potentially infinite in duration.

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Listen to a 2-channel audio excerpt:

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