The Watermill Center's annual series Viewpoints: Nights @ the Roundtable, which features conversations with artists working across a range of disciplines, will take place online via Zoom on four consecutive Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m., starting on Jan. 6 with the Daxophone Consort.
What is a Daxophone? Invented by Hans Reichel in 1987, it is an electric wooden experimental musical instrument consisting of a wooden blade fixed in a wooden block that holds one or more contact microphones. When struck or played with a bow, the vibrations are amplified to produce a wide range of sounds, which can be "very unexpected and sometimes very comical," according to oddmusic.com.
The Daxophone Consort consists of Daniel Fishkin, Cleek Schrey, and Ron Shalom, who will discuss the material properties of the instrument and introduce various aspects of performance practice. They will also demonstrate other music made with the instrument by the notable practitioners in its short history, among them Mr. Reichel.
Erica-Lynn Huberty, a Sag Harbor artist and writer, will be at Watermill with "Running From Houses/Retreating to Houses," an exploration of women in communities, on Jan. 13. Playing off the phrase "women running from houses," which refers to Gothic romance novels whose covers inevitably picture a woman doing just that, Ms. Huberty will explore the marginalization of women and the roles they play at home, especially during a global pandemic.
Adam Lenz, a composer, and Zach Rowden, a musician, will talk on Jan. 20 about their recent collaborative work "A Way of Providing Ventilation," which examines the history and architecture of the tobacco sheds in the Connecticut Valley through charcoal drawings and a site-specific sound installation. Using double bass, fiddle, and tobacco leaves, the work seeks to imagine the ventilation patterns of the curing sheds, bringing to life the creaks, crackles, and howls of the wind passing through them.
The series will conclude on Jan. 27 with two multidisciplinary artists, Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya, whose collaborative works take the form of live installations, performances, and sculptures, as well as publications, research, and community projects. "Through our practice, we expose the multiplicity of spatial and temporal intervals existing within the body and between materials and environments," according to a statement of their intentions.
Registration for the free talks is via the center's website.
