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Re: [microsound] Re: on working methods for live performance



Matt Davignonwrote:

> For me as an audience member, the turnoff behind
> laptop performance isn't the lack of showiness. It's
> the gradual loss of faith that what you're hearing is
> being created "live". Watching a laptop performer, you
> don't really know to what degree he's creating the
> music in real time. He might be just hitting "play" on
> some audio file or automated process, or he might not
> be. You don't know.

I agree. Part of the pleasure is knowing that a unique musical event is
happening (being created by artist, machine or other process) in real time ,
in the here and now. But its not a question of feeling that one is being
deceived by the performer, its more of a question of ambiguity, of not
knowing what the performer is doing (is it generation, processing, djing,
etc?). 

example: when I saw Bernard Parmegiani perform I was initially impressed
with his performance and appreciated the sounds that he was producing but it
was not until I grasped what he was actually doing that full extent of his
performance hit me.  When I realised that he was manipulating 2 channel
sound from a cd, and diffusing it into 8 channels via an ordinary analogue 8
bus mixer, I was really impressed and could really appreciate the subtlety
of his real time mixing.  For me there was a marked difference between the
initial experience of not knowing, and the second experience of knowing and
understanding the process.  There was no objective difference in the quality
of the music from the first to the second instance, but the overall
subjective experience of its reception had changed. I could figure out what
he was doing by watching his hands on the mixer and looking at what was
plugged into it. This is not so easy with a laptop performance. You don't
often get a feeling for what is actually happening.


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