What if captions ‘step up,’ ‘speak,’ and ‘tell’ their stories?
 
“[opera captions]” focuses on captions bringing together accessibility, inner-imagined voices, and creativity. The music-theater-film-translation-poetry performance “[opera captions]” reimagines what captions as an “actor” can do beyond functioning as a communication conveyor and sound interpreter in audiovisual media while interacting with and personified by humans: New York composer-performers collective thingNY and viewer-audiences. “[opera captions]” invites you to celebrate the lives of captions that have been both cherished and hated.
 

Jay Afrisando is a composer, multimedia artist, researcher, and educator. He works on aural diversity, acoustic ecology, and cultural identity, focusing on disability and environmental justice, accessibility, and decolonization of arts practices through multisensory and antidisciplinary practices. Collaborating with various artists and culture bearers, he has presented works in various scenes and places, including at Curb Appeal Gallery, Sound Scene at Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center, ARGOS Projector: The Faraway Nearby, and Attenborough Arts Centre, among others. He has been awarded the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin 2024, the MAP Fund 2022, and the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship 2021-22, among others. He is an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz. https://www.jayafrisando.com
 

thingNY is a collective of composer-performers who fuse electronic and acoustic chamber music with new opera, improvisation, theater, text, song, and installation. Founded in 2006, thingNY performs experimental sound works created collaboratively by the core ensemble—Paul Pinto, Erin Rogers, Jeffrey Young, Gelsey Bell, Dave Ruder, Andrew Livingston, Isabel Castellvi, and alejandro t. acierto—and by adventurous composers such as Jennifer Walshe, Robert Ashley, Raven Chacon, Rick Burkhardt, Pauline Oliveros, Miguel Frasconi, Jay Afrisando, Vinko Globokar, John Cage, Julius Eastman, and Pamela Z. Past works by thingNY include: “SubtracTTTTTTTTT,” “This Takes Place Close By,” “Time: A Complete Explanation in Three Parts” (with Panoply Performance Lab), “Dear Nancine,” and “ADDDDDDDDD.” Recently thingNY released the album “Passover” on Innova Recordings. www.thingNY.com