May 14, 2015
Outside the box
Professors Don Meyer (left) and Davis Schneiderman created an audio-visual experience linked to a Chicago play.
Two professors rose to the artistic challenge and created Modern Business Machines, a collage video inspired by the Goodman Theatre play, stop.reset.
Professor of English Davis Schneiderman and Professor of Music Don Meyer combined their original scripts with images and sounds to craft an audio-video experience in four different-but-interrelated tracks.
Their inspiration was the play by Regina Taylor, a 2011 honorary degree recipient of Lake Forest College, which explores modern technology’s impact on the world. Taylor invited collaborations around her play’s themes, bringing generations and communities together through art and technology. Schneiderman and Meyer worked together as The Muttering Sickness, an audio art collective they facilitate.
“Working on projects like this, I’m using the same computer programs and methods my students use,” said Meyer. “It gives me good insight into their creative process.”
“Collage is the way our students experience the world, through digital products that often ‘read’ as both individual and collective in the same breath,” Schneiderman said. “Modern Business Machines is an exploration of private and public experiences of consumption.”