The Center for Integrated Media at the California Institute of the Arts announces the release of its new online sound/art collaboration called "The Lament Project." "The Lament Project" is part of the 2008 release of Viralnet.net, the Center's online journal and project space. Curated by Cindy Bernard, Kathy Brew, Beth Rosenberg, Martha Wilson and Tom Leeser.
The curators invited fifty artists from various media to submit a one-minute original sound work that they could describe as a lament, a wail, a moan or a cry.
'The Lament Project' grew from a desire to work with a wide variety of interdisciplinary artists to produce a unique online project that could respond to the personal and social anxiety found in today's contemporary global culture. We thought that the best way Viralnet.net could cut through the corporate media's commodification of suffering and conflict, would be in a personal and visceral way, using sound.
The lament is one of the world's oldest musical and poetic forms for expressing sorrow and grief. It is found in both the east and the west, in classical traditions as well as folk traditions. It has evolved over the centuries informing new genres along the way, like the blues. It is a primal sound that is born from a place deep inside the individual and reflects the cries of the larger collective.
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