On January 5th as part of the i.e. reading series Bonnie Jones performed The Interpretations of Dream, a “live typing” written piece accompanied by the creepy slow-mo sounds of (one assumes) the same traveling companion Dream mentions—none other than multi-instrumentalist and performer extraordinaire Dan Breen.

Video by Lauren Bender for Radar Redux
http://www.radarredux.com/reviews/jones.html

The i.e Series has itself traveled to new venues over the last couple of years, but landed a beautiful locale in Carriage House, on Hargrove Street between 22nd and 23rd Streets. Bonnie projected onto Carriage House’s front wall over the stage a la Thalia Field, but with, as some remarked afterward, more “simple language.” In fact the language mimicked the loose narrative of Bonnie’s “live typing” itself—that of the eerie recollection of dreams and our eager recoveries. — Lauren Bender

Part One:

Part Two:

The project performed at the i.e. reading series (The Interpretations of Dream) was what I call one of my “live typing” or “improvised typing” performances. The general idea is that I present some piece of text/sound/visual where the main focus is the improvised typing that occurs during the performance. This typing is typically me writing in Microsoft Word and projecting the computer to the audience. For the i.e. reading I also used two sound recordings. One was a cassette I had recently found that was a few days worth of recordings of a friend’s dreams. The second set of recordings were taken in pachinko gambling/game parlors in Nagoya, Japan.

These projects came about when I was thinking about ways to apply a musical improvisation method to writing performances. Improvising in music produces certain situations, collaborations, responses, rejections, and relationships between sounds and players. I wanted to try to recreate this same dynamism with text. I wanted language presented in front of audiences to become activated. I wanted to create an environment where new forms and relationships between text / sound / audience would be developed – much in the way that improvising musicians can shape sound openly within a performance. Text off the page creates a distinctly different relationship with its’ audience. I use these projects to think about the conversations that poetry can have with engaged and present audiences within the context of a performance. — Bonnie Jones