Meet the Composer

Slide, a concert-length music/theater work featuring eighth blackbird, actor/singer Rinde Eckert and composer/performer Steve Mackey will be a multidisciplinary work about the seduction and manipulation of the American psyche. This multimedia work is inspired by a published psychological experiment in which subjects were asked to view a series of out-of-focus slides, and then identify the images when they were brought into focus. Subsequently, subjects were asked to guess the images depicted on another series of out-of-focus slides before the slides were brought into focus. The slides were then brought into focus and the subjects asked to correctly identify the image. It took them longer to identify the image when they had previously guessed what it was. Slide uses the results of this experiment as a metaphor of today’s reality in America where images are used to seduce, persuade, and misdirect.