Paralleling several recent series devoted to the overlap between idea-based art, culture bound illnesses, conceptual poetics, and various studio-based practices, James Hoff is devoting his residency to studying and exploring the concept of involuntary musical imagery, or earworms, as the basis for several new musical compositions. For this first installment, Hoff gives a performative lecture on his research into the intellectual history and phenomenon of earworms and involuntary audio imagery. The talk outlines his compositional strategies based on the ear worm, while contextualizing these strategies within a larger narrative about viruses as a productive and distributive source.
James Hoff is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. His work encompasses sound, painting, writing, performance, and publishing. He is the co-founder of Primary Information (with Miriam Katzeff), a non-profit arts organization devoted to publishing artists’ books and art-historical documents. He has lectured throughout Europe and the United States at venues such as the MCA (Denver, CO), the Pompidou (Paris, France), the Sorbonne (Paris, France), Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Nova Scotia, Canada), and the National Academy of Art (Oslo, Norway). This will be his first performative lecture in New York City.
