Bryan Day + Driftwood Orchestra

An evening of hand built custom noise devices played live.

Bryan Day (San Francisco) is a sound artist, musical instrument designer, and conceptual artist. His sound work focuses on the subtle textural interplay of natural recordings and amplified electronic sounds generated by his invented instruments. Using scavenged electronics, repurposed mechanical components, and amplified materials that you might find in your garage or your great uncle’s office, he re-imagines them into constructivist sound sculptures. In addition to his own audio work, he has run the Public Eyesore / Eh? labels since 1997.

Driftwood Orchestra is not concerned with perfection or standards of artistic success, but is interested in creating a way to communicate with the forest with the intent to somehow, someday apologize. The point is not to create music, or to showcase instrument playing skills. More so it is a way to give a voice to the trees. All that they have survived to grow and exist and everything that has happened to a piece of wood before it became an object in Driftwood Orchestra. Ever increasing demands of civilization unconcerned with the survival of the forest always pushing. Until now the trees had no voice after death to tell the stores or share knowledge from a life of silent suffering. Not that the trees would use a language any of us could ever understand or perhaps care if we understand in the direct way we perceive language. However if given the chance and under situations where people are open to receiving messages from the forest via a dead tree it could be that the forest may send a message of sorts. As one listens to Driftwood Orchestra players struggle to find solutions to creating sound in a live improvised setting imagine that the message could be simply “we all live and thrive together or we all suffer and die together”.