In Physical Arrangement for String Quartet, musicians perform a new composition created by Benjamin Buchanan while placed in strenuous/precarious positions throughout the designated space. Using custom fabricated furniture, a cellist plays from a 9 ft. tall chair, a violist lays on their back on a bench, and two violinists lay against the floor.

The music composition employs contemporary and experimental genres, as well as cinematic qualities. Buchanan also enacts a plethora of extended techniques, which are unconventional or non-traditional methods of playing musical instruments used to obtain unusual sounds or timbres.

The composition and choreography amplifies each musician’s body in space and in relation to one another while providing a playful and meditative atmosphere where the norms of musical traditions are defied in an absurd fashion. Over time, the musicians learn to adapt and collaborate from their new postures.

Physical Arrangement of String Quartet was performed as part of the collaborative exhibition Symphony of Gestures, created by Dittrich and Buchanan at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art within the context of ArtPrize, an international art competition based in Grand Rapids, MI that attracts over 500,000 visitors in a three week period. Symphony of Gestures was an ArtPrize Seven Public Vote Top 5 Finalist in the Time-based category.

A meditation on the relationship between the rhythms of the body and rhythms within the natural world, reaffirming our relationship to the land.

A performance/installation using long range bluetooth technology to send signals from pressure sensors in the artist’s shoes to a kick drum when the artist is within a 1 mile range of the drum. This technology enables an immediate real-time connection with no delay between the artist’s footsteps and the drum beating. The work creates an awareness of the unconscious everyday rhythm of walking. This awareness makes one more conscious of where they are and where they are going, to see where they have not seen before.

Alex and Olmsted's Jim Henson Foundation grant awarded MAROONED! A Space Comedy is an innovative new puppet show, featuring music from the Voyager Golden Record, that takes place at the outer reaches of space. An astronaut crashes on an uncharted planet. Will she be able to survive strange creatures, anomalous atmosphere, and isolation in order to find her way home? See for yourself… in MAROONED!
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All ages.
​Available for tour! Tech rider available upon request.
Trailer filmed by Sharon Crissinger.