BREAK : preparations for the apocalypse
by Dolphin Midwives
6 December 2018
Sage Elaine Fisher is an American composer, performer and sound artist based in Portland, OR. She is best known for her performance project, ‘Dolphin Midwives’ which integrates/abstracts harp, and voice using electronics, extended techniques and ritual processes. She explores themes of empathy, natural cycles, vulnerability and human relationships to structure and technology. Part social experiment, part meditation, part practical magic, she uses psychoacoustics, intuition, and constant re-interpretation of structure to invite awareness, transformation, empathy and transcendence.
She has performed at various contemporary art centers and venues on the west coast, including Disjecta, S1, PICA, Coaxial Arts, and Columbia City Theatre, and shared her work at TBA Fest, Debacle Fest, PDX POP NOW, Olympia Experimental Music Festival, Subharmonic, The Wayward Music Series and the CMG’s Improv Summit of Portland. In 2015, she released Orchid Milk, her first recording under the Dolphin Midwives moniker. Her installation ‘NATURAPHONES’ was shown in 2016 at The Bison Building, as a culmination of a six-month residency for PNCA+OCAC’s ACD program, and featured four large-scale acoustic sculptures, ambient performance, and several sculptural prototypes. Later in 2016, she founded and directed the Dröna Choir to perform her new choral piece, invisibility ritual, which was performed on the new moon in total darkness, and explored the space between silence and sound. In 2018 she composed a new score for Night of the Living Dead, commissioned by the PJCE and supported by a RACC grant.
Her upcoming album, Liminal Garden, will be released Jan 2019 by Beacon Sounds & Sounds et al.