Project Background

ARTIST STATEMENT

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Story + Sound is a community art project of alison hight that aims to forge connection and bring attention to otherwise unheard or unamplified stories, sounds, and experiences – revealing the hidden among us to connect, give voice, and integrate. alison uses improvised musical performances, compositions, installations, and visual arts as the building blocks of interdisciplinary works. Exploring themes of intimacy, power, voice, and peak experiences, alison's art serves as a pathway to healing and wholeness, to recognizing and experiencing your individual sense of power, voice, and intimacy within the collective experience. They create by bringing together different artistic methods and mediums in novel ways to reveal otherwise unrecognizable patterns within the ordinary. The primary methods applied in the Story + Sound project are instrumental (piano, voice), and composing through mathematical mapping, painting, writing, and the sonification of everyday objects. With Story + Sound, alison introduces ways to break down barriers and power discrepancies that are possible between the creator and audience, by engaging members of the community in the creation of this art. The mediums are therefore varied, and include field recordings, public audio records, stories gathered from individuals around the DC region, and public data sets. In alison's artistic work, they bridge the dichotomy of repulsion and attraction by playing with sounds and visuals that feel uncomfortable or grating to find the inherent beauty, patterns, and cohesion within them. alison's art elevates the collective human experience in a way that is distinctly their own, to serve as a journey through the ordinary and sometimes painful stories we take for granted to states of transcendence, electricity, and ecstasy that are inherent in every moment.

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