Chanciness

JOE MCKAY AND JOHN ROACH

Runs / Nov 7 – Dec 14, 2025

Opening & Live Performance / Friday, Nov 7, 6–9 PM

Live Score by Anne Ishii / 7:30 PM

Hours: Sat-Sun from 2-6 PM

This fall, Grizzly Grizzly presents Chanciness, a collaborative exhibition by Joe McKay and John Roach that transforms the gallery into an interactive gaming space where technology, sound, and chance intersect. Treating sound like a live score to a silent film, the artists have invited Anne Ishii to perform a one-night-only improvised sound composition at the opening on November 7.

Large panels of grey industrial felt stretch from wall to floor, creating a soft, buoyant environment. Two glowing game stations invite play, surrounded by video and LED lights, layered audio, and the hum of interaction—game controllers, pillows for lounging, and a single mid-century chair and end table complete this living-room-meets-arcade. Use the consoles, press a button, hear a satisfying plastic tock, and a game appears on screen. There are no scores, no winners, no losers—only an open exchange between artists and audience that invites moments of fun, curiosity, and discovery.

McKay, a digital media artist, uses games and interactivity to examine how our culture consumes and produces technology. Roach, an interdisciplinary artist with a particular interest in sound and multisensory experience, builds environments that blur the line between what we see and what we hear. For their first time working together, at Grizzly Grizzly, they create systems that come alive through participation, turning visitors into co-creators in this study of order, randomness, and human impulse.

In one collaborative work, Roach invites a network of writers, scientists, urban designers, musicians, and artists to respond to three of McKay’s games: Line Drawing, Gears, and Gears Evolved. Each selection randomly pairs a phrase from one contributor with a sound from another, generating unexpected juxtapositions of logic and chance. In another piece, McKay constructs a digital landscape from discarded 3D models, obsolete code, and abandoned art projects. A chalkboard offers simple instructions: “Put stuff in the hole. Press Launch. Repeat.” The looping game mirrors the exhausting and complicated act of collecting and letting go, a humorous reflection on our digital and material excesses.

Extending this spirit of improvisation, Anne Ishii’s live performance folds the sounds of players—clicks, laughter, voices—into her composition, amplifying the exhibition’s embrace of unpredictability and transforming gameplay into a collective soundscape.

Chancinessis an experiment in collaboration, curiosity, and control. By turning technology into a site of play and exchange, McKay and Roach invite us to reconsider how we interact with our digital world and with each other.

Artist Bios:

Joe McKay is a New York-based artist and creative game maker who uses humor, gameplay, and interactivity to prompt audiences to experience art in new ways. Working across platforms such as Processing, P5.js, Three.js, Unity, Blender, and Arduino, his projects explore technology as both a medium and a form of play. McKay’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at MoMA (New York), Postmasters Gallery, the Berkeley Art Museum, Pari Nadimi Gallery, and VertexList. He is an Associate Professor of New Media at SUNY Purchase College. joemckaystudio.com

John Roach is a New York-based artist whose work explores the role of sound in shaping perception. Moving between installation, performance, and radio transmission, he uses sound to construct unconventional portraits of places and engage ideas of biodiversity and climate. Roach has exhibited internationally, including at BioBAT Art Space and NARS in Brooklyn and GlazenHuis Museum in Belgium. His audio works have been featured in the 40.4 Festival in Colorado, Reforesters Lab in Brooklyn, and the Radiophrenia Festival in Scotland. He is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Art Practice at Parsons School of Design. johnroach.net

Anne Ishii is a Philadelphia-based writer, musician, and Program Director of United States Artists. Formerly Executive Director of Asian Arts Initiative, she performs as a percussionist in the trio Totally Automatic and other ensembles. Ishii co-founded MASSIVE GOODS, a lifestyle brand and arts agency representing queer and feminist artists from Japan. Her writing has appeared in BUST, Nylon, Slate, Publishers Weekly, The Village Voice, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She has translated and adapted over twenty books and continues to bridge language, sound, and cultural exchange through her creative work.