2 cellos and 24 televisions : david rhodes

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/ music for two cellos and twenty four televisions

"...a scrappy, lo-fi, extravaganza."

"...Rhodes' couch-potato blitzkrieg upends our enthralling national pastime." Sam Smith of Flavorpill

watch the videos.

PRESS
San Francisco composer David Rhodes employs quite an "orchestra" for his latest piece - cellists April Guthrie and Aniela Perry and two dozen idiot boxes, carefully programmed for maximum idiocy by poet and screenwriter Brian Tuthill. All in an effort to get us to question where we stand in relation to the dream machine: "The devotion to 'our shows' has superseded the relevance of actual experience," Tuthill claims. As actual experiences go, this "bombardment" is bound to be high intensity. Think of Bowie as the alien Thomas Jerome Newton, gooning out in front of a wall of televisions in Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, and that might give you some idea. San Francisco Bay Guardian

A blend of lyricism and bite spurred on the success of last year's Crowded Fire production of Liz Duffy Adams and David Rhodes' musical, One Big Lie. This year, Rhodes, the company's resident composer, presents a scrappy, lo-fi extravaganza. Hauling old, donated televisions (b/w Zeniths, manual knobs) to his studio in a borrowed sedan, Rhodes and video artist Brian Tuthill rewired the assemblage to broadcast electronic music and found footage. The resulting audiovisual montage is accompanied live by cellists April Guthrie and Aniela Perry. Recalling the video art of Nam June Paik, Rhodes' couch-potato blitzkrieg upends our enthralling national pastime. Flavorpill

Television, to paraphrase Marx, is the opiate of the masses. Taken in large doses, television can have some sedative effects, making the sounds and images melt together in one long snooze. Composer David Rhodes, writer and film editor Brian Tuthill and cellist Aniela Perry have come together to shake you out of your cathode ray stupor. With a whole bunch of televisions (24, to be exact), two cellos, dissected found footage and original music, "Music for Two Cellos and 24 Televisions" will make you rethink your favorite form of passive entertainment. San Francisco Chronicle

About
In search of absolutes we fumble to find meaning. Truth is cut, recombined, edited, touched up, magnified and exploited. The world we look to is somehow unrecognizable yet familiar in the ways of disenchantment, confusion, and self-doubt. The constant barrage of media in the form of news, music, movies, print, television and Religion conspires to create in each of us a mechanized self, a cog in the machine of consumption. We devalue family, friends, art and education. The undermined self is one of automation and following. The morals and morays of culture in the 21st century oppose that of enlightenment and movement towards awareness. We are left questioning ourselves and our world yet allow ourselves to decay in apathy. Somehow in a world increasingly complex and more and more difficult to comprehend we look to decipher and explain by means of passive experience.

Our society has formed tight constructs surrounding the most effective yet misused communication device in human history. This facile existence concerns comfort, relaxation, sharing and knowledge. The Television becomes the center point of our LIVING rooms. It gives us a way to share the passage of time and to punctuate periods of our lives. Instead of having dinner with our neighbors we watch the same shows at the same times tucked within our respective homes. Instead of recounting stories of our own at work we stand around the cooler to reminisce and share a laugh about what Jerry did to Elaine last night. We fondly remember characters from our childhood who only existed on screen yet we know them intimately. The familiarity fostered with people on screen is distinct and pervasive. We know Sam Malone. We know Johnny Carson. We know Kramer. We cry for Ross and Rachel.

Everyone is watching. We all see. We all share. Television has created an alternate history. The devotion to "Our Shows" has superseded the relevance of actual experience. We watch the heart wrenching break-up of the beautiful couple on TV as if we went through the break-up ourselves. We mourn the deaths of imaginary characters and feel the pain of loss when the long running show plays out its not to be missed special two-hour final episode guest starring Ed Asner and Olympia Dukakis.

Though most of us know the power of a quick edit or deceptive sound bite we still follow our familiar friend towards this construct of truth.

Why? Why does TV have an inherent ability to draw us in and keep us there? Thirty frames a second. 22 minutes every half our. 42 minutes every hour. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. Always there to splash a glow of comfort, familiarity and friendship.