Artist: Seth / Ezra Dager
Year: 2025–2026
Medium: Five-channel digital video installation
Status: Complete
Archive Context: The Field Archive

Overview

Sonic Playlist I is a five-channel video work documenting the maintenance of a sonic environment through repetition. Rather than presenting music as performance or soundtrack, the work records the gestures required to sustain listening over time.

Each recording captures the artist’s iPhone while playing a different song through the Apple Music interface. Touches, pauses, restarts, and repeated loops remain visible, preserving the physical act of returning to sound rather than concealing it through editing.

The five recordings begin together before gradually disappearing one by one as each reaches the end of its captured duration.

The field dissolves.

One screen disappears.

Then another.

Then another.

Until only black remains.

The accompanying Data Frame identifies the songs present during the work’s creation. Viewers are invited to recreate the sonic field by selecting and looping the listed tracks while watching. No single track is privileged over another.

Position

Sonic Playlist I demonstrates that listening is not passive.

It is a practice of return.

The music continues.

The gesture remains.