John Roach is an interdisciplinary artist who engages the difficult and slippery questions provoked by sound. His work uses numerous strategies including sound installation, networked performance, participatory events, and collaborations with musicians, scientists, and glass artists. The circuitous and sometimes contrary approach he employs calls to mind one of his early influences, the author and provocateur Alfred Jarry. His results, like those of Jarry and his creation of Pataphysics, or “the science of imaginary solutions,” might at first seem ridiculous: flasks appear to bubble and pop on their own, pseudo-scientific experiments torque plaster with heat and cold, and glass percussion instruments shaped by patterns of human DNA are smashed to bits. His experimental and exploratory process, while fanciful, always aims to present an altered relationship between sound and its source. John’s work has been exhibited in venues in the United States, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Hungary, and Mexico and he has been awarded residencies at The Tacoma Museum of Glass (2017), Glazenhuis Museum (2016), Pilchuck Glass School (2015), NARS (2015), Triangle Artists Workshop (2015), and Wavefarm (2007).
Art Seed at Marble House Project
