I heard the word “dosamonoyatoya” in a dream. A young man in a remote African village said it to me when I sneezed. The word means something like gesundheit while simultaneously imparting a strong sense of humor and joy. In the dream, I doubled over in deep laughter that brought me back to my bedroom in Chicago. Upon waking, I was no longer sure what was so funny. What remained was the hazy but dense realization that understanding, learning, and knowing are intertwined with happiness. I have googled “dosamonoyatoya” over the years; I always get zero responses, but it’s possible I’m not spelling it right.
“dosamonoyatoya” explores the boundary waters between sound/music, non-verbal utterance/speech, and image/noise. A loop of live sound is built using mouth harps, voice, and throat singing. As the sound loop accumulates the different tones and voices trigger different generative video models that were trained using neural networks. Each performance creates a unique sound loop that in turn triggers a unique generative video.
This performance was recorded as part of the opening of the "Brutal Realities" exhibit, curated by Mark Amerika and Drew Austin at Dairy Center for the Arts, Boulder, Colorado, on Jan. 17th, 2020.