Joe Newlin’s artistic practice uses recorded music and other sounds, manipulated in an open source software environment, to emphasize collective aspects of social life. He is a union organizer by profession, as well as having experience as a performing and recording musician. Newlin’s artistic practice combines and synthesizes the personal values and sociological insights that he brings to – and draw from – those worlds. Music is social information. By recontextualizing music, Newlin aims to remind audiences of the collective nature of our perception of music, as well as music’s primal role in the evolution of human society. Newlin participated in SoundWalk 2008 and 2009, co-created tunedeaf.com, a site that explores the limits of commercialization of music.
Solipse emphasizes the uniqueness & solitariness of human experience. Participants use headphones at listening stations where the sound will interact with their physical movement. The sound is said to be so unique and complex that it is impossible for one participant to communicate to another exactly what they are hearing.