The Tuba Thieves

Drawing upon her experiences with hearing loss, specifically navigating between hearing and silence, Alison O’Daniel expands definitions of sonic experience beyond ear-reliance as our sole auditory skill. In the seven shorts in The Tuba Thieves, the artist’s fascination with a series of tuba robberies from Los Angeles high schools became a comparison point between loss of this tonally-rich instrument to her daily experiences of missing information and filling in conversation gaps. This on-going, multi-chapter video project threads together anecdotes of the marching bands’ reconciling the missing sound, footage of the deaf drummer Nyke Prince, the premiere of John Cage’s 4’33” in 1952, and the last punk show at the Deaf Club in San Francisco in 1979. O’Daniel inverts script-driven filmmaking processes by writing scenes based on the musical scores, which were commissioned in advance of developing the visual narratives.