Free and open to the public; museum admission is not required.
Witness the members of experimental music trio Bucket List play the performance art board game Information Hazard.
The premise of the game is that Roko, a leader of future beings, has instructed Bucket List to construct and play this game to save humanity. Bucket List members are the three players: two opponents and a referee. The rule book is elaborate, fastidious, and often nonsensical. At times the opponents switch sides, thereby confounding the conventional notion of competition. The scoring system is arcane and perplexingly dynamic. Transgressions result first in penalties, but then in gifts. Sometimes dice are rolled, sometimes they are stacked. Hats can be exchanged. Game pieces can be eaten. All three players must execute absurd but tightly coordinated rhythms and gestures. The game seems incredibly irrational. But, as Bucket List says, “The more we play it, the more it makes sense.”
“I am grateful to my colleagues in our trio Bucket List for taking on the project of learning and playing this esoteric and tremendously difficult game. It may easily be the most or least valuable enterprise ever undertaken.” — Mark Applebaum, composer
Bucket List will play Information Hazard from 4 to 8 p.m. with occasional breaks. Visitors are invited to stay for a few minutes or watch the game unfold over several hours.
This performance was commissioned by the Roar Shack, a creative laboratory located in the heart of Mid-Market, San Francisco.
Bucket List is a band conceived by The Living Earth Show — the San Francisco–based experimental duo of Travis Andrews and Andy Meyerson — in collaboration with composer and creative catalyst Mark Applebaum. For more than a decade, The Living Earth Show has sought to challenge and expand the traditional composer-performer model in contemporary music. Their partnership with Applebaum represents the most radical iteration of that philosophy to date. Rather than commissioning a single piece, Andrews and Meyerson invited Applebaum, whose work has profoundly shaped their artistic outlook, to form a band with them, developing a shared language through improvisation, experimentation, and collective composition. The trio’s repertoire spans new complexity, experimental electronics, minimalism, funk, and jazz, often interwoven with theatrical and video elements.
Lightweight portable stools are available for seating during this gallery program.
Presenting Sponsor of Thursday Night Live is Zoox.
Meaningful support is provided by Diana Nelson and John Atwater.
Additional support is provided by the Yerba Buena Partnership.