Part personal essay, part sound-and-music performance and part philosophical detective story, Words Fail Me looks backward at earlier moments when new technologies transformed the way people experienced time, attention and consciousness. Abumrad draws connections among Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, written during the emergence of the telegraph and radio; philosopher Henri Bergson’s ideas about time and “duration”; the pioneering electronic music of Delia Derbyshire; and the music of Frédéric Chopin — ultimately asking what these earlier technological shifts can teach us as artificial intelligence reshapes human perception at an even faster pace.
Rather than a traditional lecture on technology, Words Fail Me uses these threads to create a meditation on technological change and the ways humans adapt when the boundaries of their attention and perception are suddenly altered.
Abumrad is best known for Radiolab, the groundbreaking public radio program he created with Robert Krulwich that blended science, philosophy, journalism, music and inventive sound design to tell intimate and unexpected stories about complex ideas. In 2019, he created and hosted Dolly Parton’s America, a nine-part podcast that used Parton’s life and music as a lens for exploring larger questions of American identity, religion and culture.
That same curiosity drives Words Fail Me, bringing together seemingly disparate stories and ideas to examine one of the defining experiences of modern life: trying to pay attention when everything seems to demand our attention at once.
Jad Abumrad presents Words Fail Me at the Singletary Center for the Arts at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3. Tickets are $34 for adults and $21 for students and are available online at SingletaryCenter.com.
UK faculty and staff can purchase tickets for $23, while UK students can receive free tickets exclusively at the Singletary Center Ticket Office or by phone at (859) 257-4929.
A part of the UK College of Fine Arts, the Singletary Center for the Arts presents and hosts around 400 artistic, cultural and educational events annually for the university community, Lexington community and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Learn more about the center at www.SingletaryCenter.com.
