Artist Statement

As an individual living with clinical mental health issues, the most common question I’m asked by those not affected by them is “What is it like?”. Never having been particularly strong at verbal expression, I quickly realized that I would never be able to provide a clear and concise answer with my words alone. Being trained as a musician my entire life, however, provided an opportunity to express the happenings of my mind through a different medium, one that I knew I could use to translate this enigmatic subject.

Cerebral Orchestra is a multichannel audio and sensory experience, meant to provide the audience with a look into what it’s like to be living in the mind of the artist, specifically myself and my own experiences with mental illness. Using my primary instrument, my bass guitar, I sought to create four different audio compositions based on each of my four diagnosed disorders and mental illnesses that affect me daily: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Clinical Depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Each composition was produced during peak episodes of these disorders, and function as the most accurate way I can portray how they affect myself specifically. These soundscapes were then translated into spectrograms in order to give my individual experience a visual representation.

This installation of Cerebral Orchestra allows the audience to experience my diagnoses alongside me, either focusing on individual ones to view and hear or standing central and getting a glimpse of the cacophony that is my mind.