Live Show: the sound of men on cam, is a vinyl record and live performance project that thematically deals with gender (contemporary masculinities), sex, the social and political history of gay club culture and what it means to experience things «live».
The record consists of 22 tracks with audio field recordings, made during live broadcasts of men on cam, from sex cam sites. «the sound of men on cam» imbues a sonic fragility through the practices of masculinity and desire, erotic yet vulnerable. The tracks function as portraits of contemporary masculinities in the digital flow, negotiating the everyday, capturing the acoustic image of the body in domestic space. Coded domesticities unveil sonically through the spatial conditions of the broadcasts with background sounds from television programs and music mixing with the given sonics of the sex cam platforms and tech: sex toy vibrations; message and tip alerts; the tapping of the keyboard and the camer’s voice. Some tracks contain direct sexual content while others do not. All tracks are short segments of long duration broadcasts, with the camer often hours alone awaiting validation within the safety of a private home or rented space (a sealed condition) then broadcast live (online for all to see). These spaces inhabit a semi-permeable membrane, where privacy and publicity share a common ground, suggesting both safety and exposure for the camer. And even though the tracks become visually anonymous and untraceable, the acoustic information within them gives us certain access to these spatialities. The tracks/ portraits are volatile in what they embody and the sonic aesthetic is transient due to the embodiment. Together the tracks create a gesture of a queer archive of men on cam.