Re: [microsound] physical filter

[<tom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

mmm

I think that there are different ways to approach this issue.

One is to assume the position that there is no need to compensate for a lost
performer-audience
interface. Perhaps people will come to accept what may, compared to
traditional performance seem
an undynamic and physically abstract/absent gig experience.

Often the issue revolves around the sites where performances take place.
A club/gig venue/audience has a history of physical performance/presentation
and visitors will naturally assume that
a performance will contain some sort of visual spectacle. Whereas a concert
hall venue/audience that has played host to
peformances of electroacoustic/tape based music does not always carry those
associations. I've attended many tape based performances,
with or without complex multichannel speaker setups, and never really felt
bored or lacking a visual focus.

Unfortuanately i think that this reflects ultimately on the poor quality of
most live electronic performances and the poor quality of the club/gig
venues.

Inevitably performers try to compensate for this sense of loss by
accompanying their shows with visuals. However these are almost always
conceived
as simply shallow additions, ranging from simple winamp like screensavers to
expensive vj tools (often used to make cheap looking bad screensavers)
I would suggest that images with performances only work when the visual
element of the performance is as important in the artists research as is the
audio.
(this is rarely the case). VJs are almost always the worst culprits, just
like lazy djs, and everything turns into even more wallpaper that the audio
performance already was.

I feel that the scenario has arisen mainly becuase of the club-based culture
that most laptop performers have found themselves in.
Composers who end up in this field might be better off if they thought more
about different methods and environemnts  to present their work rather than
signed up for another anonymous night at another postmodern
cut-up-glitch-flyer club venue.

If anyone has ever been to Claude Lamonte Young's Dreamhouse (and i'm sure
many of you have), That was probably one of the longest running 'gigs'
around
conceived years ago and still outrates almost any clubgig i've seen..
(although autechre at camber sands were awesome)..

Many times, the performers are often too in love with their machines and
ways of working to consider a different approach to presentation, there is
something
too easy in running patches and letting algos run.. Its almost pornographic
or mastubatory.. Baudrillards Ecstasy of communication seems very apt to me
in describing this sort of performer experience . Nowadays the more visually
(and audio) interesting performances i come across are often by more 'indie'
based musicians using technology in a less pedestal format.

I think there is something to be said by not offering a compromise of shitty
visuals, but outside traditional academic venues and shows, clubs and gig
venues are perhaps not the right places to be looking?

Tom
http://www.nullpointer.co.uk

----- Original Message -----
From: "Reading, John" <john.reading@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "microsound" <microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 10:38 PM
Subject: RE: [microsound] physical filter

> Yeah, the age old "problem" people have with laptop performance and the
> physicality of the performer. To me, I'm more easily bored by gestural
> performances whether it be traditional instruments or "innovative"
> controllers (think drek as Matmos rubs their little pen on their skin,
> yawn).
>
> My performances are always changing to fit the date and location of
> where I'm playing. I use video/films created prior to and specifically
> for the venue I'm in that relate specifically to the songs. Total
> sensory emmersion? Hardly, but at least there is a forethought and
> "filter" that enables the viewer to feel as if there is something
> specific happening.
>
> In the end it all depends on what you want to see, physicality or
> ambience or cinema or site-specific happenings. But I can honestly say
> that I get irked when musicians who create in a non-linear,
> non-traditional way always feel the need to cowtow to some notion that
> the audience MUST LOOK AT YOU and be entertained (and the inverse as
> well ie. black curtain).
>
> do you really need to tweak that laptop? do you really need to even be
> present?
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Kim Cascone [mailto:kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> > Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 5:16 PM
> > To: microsound_list
> > Subject: [microsound] physical filter
> >
> >
> >
> > > I'm afraid I don't understand.  is this liberation from the
> > perspective
> > > of a performer, that the physicality of an instrument takes
> > away from
> > > the real-time thinking you can do about the music?
> > no...I'm describing the 'filter' of having to translate
> > musical ideas into
> > physical actions required to play a traditional
> > instrument...laptops remove
> > this filter and this is part of what people feel they're
> > missing out on in
> > the 'exchange value' involved in a musical performance...too
> > busy to go in
> > detail...
> >
> > > if the latter is your concern, you could always hide your gestures
> > > behind a black curtain.
> > the act of adding a black curtain is just another form of
> > spectacle...its
> > calling attention to the wrong aspect of the
> > performance...adding a black
> > curtain (curious that you chose a 'black' curtain) is just as
> > useless as
> > projecting my laptop so the audience can better 'understand' what I'm
> > doing...
> >
> > > an improvement in interface design does not
> > > necessitate a change in what you present to the audience, does it?
> > it depends on the 'improvements' made to the interface
> > doesn't it? think:
> > MIDI ball <urgh!>
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~sabean2/performance.html
> >
> >
> >
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> >
>
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