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Re: [microsound] laptops kim's article



Hi,

> The second objection has more to do with computers in live performance.
The
> laptop performer (or computer performer) does not offer the audience much,
> apart from the raw sound of their music. In a dance music environment this
> does not matter much because the audience immerse themselves in the music
> in a physical way (even though they all stand "sheep like" facing the DJ).
> But at an experimental performance, the pure sonic experience can be a
> difficult thing to sit through. Even if the performer is doing something
> extremely interesting with  her computer, it matters little to the
audience
> because they have no way of perceiving that process. The performer might
be
> grabbing sounds at random and processing them through DSP effects, making
> music which they themselves have never heard before, but if the audience
> don't know this (and often they have no way of knowing) the performer
might
> just as well be playing a CD.
>
> But this problem is not just confined to computer performance. Any
> electronic performance suffers from this alienation effect. But the laptop
> performance seems to be the most extreme. With analogue electronics at
> least the audience see a collection of wierd boxes connected with
> spaggetti, which enables them to get some clues as to what might be
> happening, they might even get eye contact from the performer, instead of
> 30 minutes of staring into a screen. All of this helps.


As a composer and performer (playing pure tape compositions, computer pieces
or even object manipulation based pieces) I've always ask show-organizers to
NOT play in front of audience.(Always hard to convince them, especially if
you ask for a dark room...) - experiences playing in front of the audience
are rarely positive for me (Am i looking like a rock star ?)
A "pure sonic experience" is for EARS not for eyes and I've never understand
why there is this need "to show what you do"...
But it has been discussed, discussed, and discussed before, as you may
know.....

Best,
Cedric Peyronnet

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian Andrews" <i.andrews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "microsound" <microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 10:05 AM
Subject: Re: [microsound] laptops kim's article