The Vis-à-Vis Society is led by founding poet-scientists Dr. Ink (a.k.a. Sierra Nelson) and Dr. Owning (a.k.a. Rachel Kessler) and grows out of our nineteen-year collaborative practice. In our work, we intersect with live audiences (often in unexpected public spaces) and slow down the pace, inviting people to provide individual data (most often through poem-surveys, graphing, and movement) which we then transform into a composite portrait of our collective personal experience in the moment through analog and lyrical modes.

For this performance, “Inner Piano / Playing the Park,” we were invited to take part in a Pianos in the Parks Performance Series curated by the nonprofit organization One Reel. We were provided with a piano (decorated by a local visual artist) installed outdoors in a public park for the summer.

Our driving questions: what were the invisible inner states of the people inhabiting and moving through the park in this particular shared space-time of this July day, and how might we express those inner states aurally via the piano (to make visible via sound)? Also, what was the musical tone or pace of the park itself: how might the piano as our investigative instrument illuminate our environment? And last of all, what were the individual notes that would best express each individual person intersecting with this moment, and what song would that create together?

After leading people on a brief guided meditation, opening their senses to their immediate environment and to the physicality of the piano as a being, we then asked participants to answer the following questions, and mark their answers on the piano using garage sale sticky dots, creating the collective song themselves over the span of the performance.

A. What best describes your current inner state?

X) Underground river Y) Dog chasing a stick Z) Sky full of stars on a summer night

B. What best describes the park you are in right now?

1) Pianissimo 2) Forte 3) Adagio 4) Allegro

C. Find the note on the piano that BEST describes you. Play this key as many times as you need (at least 3 times).

At the end of the performance, as we removed all the sticky dots from the piano, an unexpected new song emerged: our collective portrait in reverse, as each key was played again in the process of erasure.