Melt Me Into The Ocean

Nestled on the edge of the Monterey Bay between the Pacific Ocean and the redwoods, a strong sense of place emanates throughout Santa Cruz. Melt Me Into The Ocean (MMIO) is a day-long event that uses sound to connect participants to this sense of place.

MMIO features participatory works by local and nationally renowned artists that use sound, images, technology, and their bodies to activate public spaces including the West Jetty Walkway, Seabright Beach, and Ocean View Park, to reveal new facets of our relationships to local ecosystems and environments.

The centerpiece of the festival is a new piece by sound artist Yolande Harris, which employs underwater recordings—of whales and other creatures—from the Monterey Bay. Part I of the work begins with a guided listening sound walk on the West Jetty Parkway in the Santa Cruz Harbor. Part II will close out the festival at sunset: a performance in Ocean View Park featuring underwater recordings, projections of whales in the water, and live instruments. In Harris’s words, this work explores “the experience of color, sound, and environment as ‘polymorphous magical substance’ and the ocean as energy-exchange or ‘chi.’”

The festival will also include works by composer and technologist Casey Anderson, who will present a new piece involving radios and other homemade technology that will enable participants to explore Seabright Beach through the fluctuations of sound over the radio, and a performance by Maidens of Delos (Laura Steenberge and K.C.M. Walker), who will play a program of newly composed pieces as well as folk and ancient tunes about sirens and the sea on Baroque instruments in the cave on Seabright Beach. An up-to-date listing of artists is available at indexical.org.
Schedule of Events: August 11, 2018

3:00pm - 7:00pm: Periodic performances of artist works along Seabright Beach
7:00pm - 7:45pm: Guided sound walk from Seabright Beach to Ocean View Park
8:00pm - 8:30pm: Sunset performance by Yolande Harris at Ocean View Park

Visit indexical.org for more information about schedules, location, and an event map.