A development of Adam Jansch’s headphone piece One man band x n, the performative sound art installation Human jukebox x n uses a jukebox paradigm to allow the audience to choose the tracks that a band of headphone-isolated performers play.
Human jukebox x n is built around a technological configuration called a ‘performer unit’, which creates a split between what a performer and the audience hear: where each performer is fed a mix of their individual instrumental input along with a feed from their own jukebox source through headphones, the audience hears just the combined instrumental outputs of the performers. Through this, and the wide staging of the band in the performance space, the mechanics of the conventional performer/audience barrier are reconfigured.
The jukebox is employed as a method of allowing the audience control of their sonic experience: each performer has chosen their own playlist of tunes to play to and it is up to the audience to select from these tunes. They may choose to use this responsibility as they wish, with the possibility for synchronising the performers externally through their musical choices or just picking the tunes that they want to hear.
The jukebox is of a custom-design, created by Jansch using HTML5 and Javascript for use in a modern web browser. It displays the song list, currently playing song and the upcoming song queue. It also features additional functionality built-in for the performance situation: auto-playback of tunes when quiet, and breaks for the performers when busy.
For the performers it is important to embody the tunes that they play to: in performance they should make the tunes their own, through stage presence, musical embellishment and the like. Also, sunglasses are a vital part of the costume, reinforcing the performer/audience barrier.
The premiere of Human jukebox x n was held at in tones: brass/jukebox/television/glitch at the University of Huddersfield on April 3rd 2011. It ran for 90 minutes, with Anikó Tóth on vocals, Pat Allison on electric guitar, Richard Glover on keyboards and Jansch on bass guitar. Video highlights of this performance can be seen below.
Human jukebox x 4 highlights from Adam Jansch on Vimeo.