This is a only a test. It's check up time! Open wide! It's time to see what condition your condition is in... You've just tuned in at the most opportune time. The airwaves are really dancing right about now, yeah, the air is electric, it dances, has an appetite. Open wide, say ahhh, let's see what's in there... let us in there! Let's see if we can check and tune that body of yours, ......hmmmm, and I mean yours... The air is just right, now. Can you feel it? Can you hear the crackle, the snap? Can't you just taste it? Positively electrophilic!!.......mmmmmmmmm... C'mon! Open up! Settle back so we can enter your mind, we're all charged up! Ready to swallow you whole!..... Some call it electrotherapy... Some call it vocal cannibalism...

from Gorgeous Fever (1994-97) text: Lynn Book photo credit: Johannes Knesl

Lynn Book's interdisciplinary performance work has always been an amalgam, concerned with image (she has done most of her own set design/installation), with text (she has been writing and creating texts for most works since the early 1980s), with movement (see Mercuria (1997-98) excerpt on video page as a recent example) and of course, with sound (besides the vocal work, she has worked on sound design with collaborators since 1980). This work has been seen primarily in theatrically oriented spaces for the last several years, however, as one critic noted the work is really more like "·rites of transformation that look like theater·"

"[Book] goes after her subject matter with daring, taking the problematics of gender into a new arena of investigation. Employing rites of transformation that look like theater, the body of the performer becomes accessible as a psychological demonstration; confronting the word and the gaze, the body wins - with pleasure."  -Vickie Hoch, P-Form, 1990; review of Physical Vision.

Probably the most distinguishing difference is that the work doesn't center itself on the text - each facet being treated with equal weight, all media and disciplinary choices supporting the conceptual foundation for the work. Sound, and more specifically later, voice, became a heightened site of production within the interdisicplinary work. Focusing on just voice and textual/musical material coincided with a response to the political climate of the early 90s during the 'culture wars'. With tongue (1991), Book created a 'soapbox' piece that allowed her to creatively and directly bring her work into the public fray, without the burden of theatrical demands. Through working withTatsu Aoki a little later, Book was able to explore the musical potential of her voice and investigate longer, 'symphonic' structures for compositions that reflected the 'bricologist' approach of her interdisciplinary performance work (hear an excerpt from Native Power(1993) on Recordings page). Gorgeous Fever (1994-97) *(see quote) marked a return to making a full-fledged performance/theater work with hybrid forms and performances springing from that including Gorgeous Fever: the radio drama (1995), a two-part recording for radio (see Video page and a text excerpt on Printed Matter page).

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