wikiGong.com is an artists' collective dedicated to cataloging the sounds of large public structures for creative purposes, such as assembling virtual instruments. Its guiding metaphor is the Indonesian gamelan ensemble. Like its sonic raw material, wikiGong's work bends toward the built environment and our reactions to it: toward place, community, and history. Past projects combined sonic textures derived from infrastructure with narrative, focusing on the Golden Gate Bridge, the Los Angeles River, the Bradbury Building, the Gerald Desmond Bridge, and technological development.

wikiGong.com's presentation for PUMP, "Elegiac: Without Adult Supervision," attempts a broader, deeper elegiac interpretation of previously performed pieces. Jacob Dickinson ("Elegiac" of wikiGong's debut triumvirate) will front these versions, employing the growing archive of audio and video resources created by the wikiGong collective's ongoing process, and supported by a purpose-built network of on- and offstage collaborators.

“Silentium Universi” is the name of our primary piece: “Silence of the Universe,” starkly opposed to "the music of the spheres." It's another name for the Fermi paradox, its inspiration and subject.

The Fermi paradox is this: Any reasonable guess tells us that our vast universe teems with life, and that other civilizations will have developed many times. And yet…the silence is deafening.

If the universe is alive with intelligent species, where are they? Why haven’t we heard from them?

The Fermi paradox takes its name from nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi. As he put it, “Where is everybody?” Many answers have been offered.

Channeling a gentle children's TV host, Elegiac/Jacob will explore an extended version of the previous "Silentium Universi" narrative, introduced at soundpedro. We anticipate that this billion-year spree of fate, indifferent gods, failure, murder, suicide, doom, deception, broken dreams, futility, entropy, rapacious viruses (both wet- and software), obsessive-compulsive artificial intelligence, gamma ray bursts, bad luck, and simple stupidity, sheathed in irony no more prophylactically effective than a thin, scuffed layer of re-used, hand-me-down latex, must break the placid mask of our avuncular narrator. However, we can only speculate regarding his failure mode.
Things could get ugly.

"Buzz" revives wikiGong's favorite vehicle for stage banter. "Buzz" shows intelligence in the service of sycophancy, obfuscation, and outright deception, illustrating another mechanism through which a civilization might choke to death on its own fumes. If we insist on confusing this blather with communication, then we richly deserve the extinction we ardently pursue.

Dave Ayer ("Disaffected," and wikiGong originator) will be present in his audiovisuals as the ghost in the machine, the deus ex machina, the man behind the curtain.
New arrival Israel Romero will add his own layer of sonic styling.