Reaction Is What We Do
Reacting to one’s surroundings is no longer a mere method for one’s own personal expression. It’s now simultaneously a nervous addiction, and a vital therapeutic act both beckoned and facilitated by the exponential growth of networked social communication tools, and the further encroachment of special interests into all realms of society that were once thought to be personal. One is forced to react, in an attempt to stay humane and sane, in a post industrial whiplash culture where even the most intimate communications are routinely transmitted across vast networks via screens and keys of varying sizes—brought to you by your benevolent sponsor. This reaction is often involuntary and destructive—The Exponential makes its reaction intentional and productive. We’re responding to the loss of control over our absorption of this environment littered with the sounds, smells, and waste of a hyper-stressed population; where glass and steel monuments to monetary deities rise high above the compromised dreams of it’s inhabitants; where ghettos are fed with synthesized fast foods and hyper-capitalist pop music expounds executive values of thug success. Our visceral response to this storm of clutter, however, can be designed, and it is humane and authentic. We indulge in our reaction, harnessing its revolt and exposing its complexity and timber, allowing our observer to step into this new space: a creative ethos of imaginative possibility. To do this we reach backwards, clutching onto ancient acoustic instruments—some almost entirely forgotten—and project them forward through the means of modern technology. We build a primal, human response to over-stimulation, and push it up through the cracks in this cluttered outer shell of our contemporary existence.