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Joel Swanson - Via Negativa

  • 1205 10th Street Plaza Denver, CO 80204 United States (map)

The Altar Call is the ritual concluding evangelical church services where congregants approach the pulpit to confess sins, accept Jesus, or rededicate their faith—all while a hymn loops continuously. During these prolonged moments of spiritual reckoning, the artist, as a child, secretly transformed hymnal pages into improvised "Plinko" boards, tracing pencil paths between the printed notes and words.

Via Negativa computationally reconstructs that childhood game as a four-channel graphic score. Four large screens, oriented vertically and arranged back-to-back to form a luminous central column, display hymn texts commonly sung during altar calls. On each screen, a dot descends through the text, colliding with and erasing words as it falls. When it reaches the bottom, it loops—just as the hymns once looped—creating a continuous, ever-diminishing score. Four professional vocalists stand facing the screens, vocally interpreting the fragmenting text in real time. As words vanish, familiar phrases become stuttered utterances, then silence. The piece cycles through four hymns with brief pauses between.

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