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The Director of the Arts Administration program at Boston University,\u00a0Lanfranco Aceti<\/a>\u00a0is proud to announce,\u00a0Sound Politics<\/em>,\u00a0<\/i>to be performed at the Boston Athenaeum<\/a>,\u00a0September 30, 2016, from\u00a012:00 pm to\u00a01:00 pm<\/strong>.\u00a0Sound Politics is<\/i> a curated project that includes two performances,\u00a0Duty\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Untitled for Cyborg String Quartet,<\/i>\u00a0by Australian artist\u00a0Michaela Davies<\/a>.<\/p>\n These pieces explore\u00a0the application of electric muscle stimulation (EMS) to musical composition and performance. MIDI compositions created by the artist are used to trigger custom-built EMS devices that send electrical impulses to performers\u2019 muscles. These impulses generate specific involuntary movements, causing the performers to \u2018play\u2019 their instruments.<\/p>\n The performances explore the complexities of contemporary living in an \u2018electrified\u2019 and \u2018engineered\u2019 age where the will of the people appears to be determined by involuntary reactions to electronically mediated stimuli. The performances will arrive in Boston following a staging under the\u00a0Elytra Filament Pavilion in the John Madejski Garden of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIn an evermore engineered world,\u201d explains curator Lanfranco Aceti, \u201cquestions abound regarding\u00a0the role of the individual in the structure of contemporary society. The hyper-designed, hyper-controlled and hyper-surveyed structures of governments and corporations alike appear to have engineered systems of oppressions in which a simple task can become a Kafkian nightmare. Trapped in these nets of electric and wireless connections, individuals are loosing the ability to shape and design the public and private spaces within which they live. Michaela Davies\u2019 performances focus on the struggle of the body, the poetics of resistance and the social politics of power and powerlessness. This area of aesthetic investigation obliges the viewer to see, manifested in the physical forms of EMS cables and patches, the myriads of external controls affecting our behaviors daily. The world offered by Davies in front of our eyes is one of a poetical dystopia where the sound compositions reflect the socio-political struggles of the body. It is the hidden power (electric, psychological, behavioral, social), transforming the individual into an homologated entity, that the artist displays through an aesthetic of the quotidian and the virtuosity of sound. It is for this reason that Sound Politics<\/em> \u2013 an exhibition of the two performances Duty\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Untitled for Cyborg String Quartet<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 has become the title of this event at the Boston Athenaeum in Boston, with the intention of celebrating and analyzing the historical fighting of individuals against superimposed controls in the\u00a0quest for freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n Special for ArtWeek Boston<\/a>, artist Michaela Davies will give a Master Lecture\u00a0about her work following the performances.<\/p>\n This event is sponsored by the\u00a0Museum of Contemporary Cuts<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Australian Council for the Arts<\/a>\u00a0with the gracious support of the\u00a0