Blog 4 - Say Something Bunny

Alison Kobayashi's work "Say Something Bunny" is definitely one of the most unique projects I have seen so far.  Unique in the sense that a whole world is created or rather a piece of the past is revived through voice recordings. Kobayashi managed to recreate an entire conversation, as well as the background conversation, from a low quality, distorted recording. It's not the conversation that fascinates me the most. but rather the amount of effort put into recreating the exact conversation - word for word, sound for sound.  

Kobayashi puts a large amount of time into listening to the recordings, repeating it thousands of times in order to pinpoint the exact things being said and the number of individuals involved in the conversation. Shen also puts in time to research, which spans over the course of several years, the identity of the individuals within the recordings, as well as their relationships between one another.  

This type of information turns the dialogue into something much more meaningful. It turned dialogue between some random people into something more personal. The audience no longer sees the “characters” as a group of random strangers, but now rather as a closer more intimate unit, since they learn about the family dynamic among the “characters”. The audience can now relate to the performance on a more personal level, seeing it as a family activity or by connecting it their own lives.   

Kobayashi’s inclusions of the audience within her performance transforms the audio performance into something much more immersive for the audience as it brings them into the play itself. By involving the audience in the act, the performance turns from something meant to only be heard and seen, into something the audience can actively participate within. It causes them to invest more attention and connect to the “characters”. The amount of dedication and the time invested into this project is truly astounding.