Settling the score, part 1.

Lots of videos posted to YouTube, only highlighting some here.

Ambient sounds and images when you're the only one in the room turned out to be quite fun. The door to my studio space has a sweet little jingle bell to it when it shuts, so I started walking in and out of the room and recorded the sound. I built up a soundtrack from this, often leaving the previous track running so that it bled into the next track and created quite a nice muddle as the tracks were layered further and further. The video ended up being signature "lena" I think. I am able to get 3 layers (2 recorded, 1 live) of me walking in and out of the door with decent quality when you are actually in the space. The poor quality of web based video means that you probably won't be able to make out the second recorded layer.

Here's a video clip from today which I think shows a good cross section of process and how it might all fit together. It's quite slow, but the camera was right next to one of the speakers, so the sound is fairly decent.



From watching these, I know that I need to spend more time repeating the action and figure out other ways or positions from which to watch the piece of video I have just created. Too much hovering near the laptop!

Interstitials and sound clips.

I created some interesting compositions while accidentally overlapping videos. I thought they might work nicely as stand alone loops which can play when I need a break or am not in the space. Something like that.

The first clip was created last week on a day when I had given my keys to my brother for the day and couldn't get to any cameras! I learned how to export directly from Isadora, which is a useful thing if I decide to use these interstitials.





I also learned that I can record audio in quicktime but I don't seem to be able to play them except in my iTunes. So! Hopefully I will sort this out soon and post them here.

Nunning sketches.

Check out the "related video" links on my YouTube site for these! Ha!

Taking a stab at an answer. Sound.

So, in my last post I mentioned that I do believe that I walked away from this piece being most interested in the sonic dimensions of it. For me, this means that I'll be moving away from the format I used for the Nunnery show–something I was quite sure was going to happen anyway, but wanted to see out while I learned more about technology I need to learn. Right, so that was vague.

Clues about what I'm interested in: the artists I've come across that excite or interest me, they're all from music backgrounds!

Overall performance and fluid use of technology without getting stuck behind it:

• Laurie Anderson
  Looking at retrospective texts of her work, she has dipped her fingers into all sorts of interesting areas. I'll post a more thorough bit about particular pieces that interest me when I've read, listened, watched more.
  
• Pamela Z (thanks Lucy!)
  Looked at this video and went "yeah, that's essentially what I want to do!" Of course, I don't have a body synth or operatic training; and I want to consider the performance space more than projections, equipment, me. But really, amazingly inspirational stuff and very closely aligned to my interests.
  

Others:
- Meredith Monk (I like the fact that she started as a dancer)
- Christian Wolz (came across him when looking at descriptions of the Giving Voice festival at Center for Performance Research the end of the month)
- the "gibberish" muses from my goth past: Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance) and Liz Fraser (Cocteau Twins)

Initial thoughts on Nunning.

Learned a bunch from the Nunnery show. The overarching impression I've walked away from my piece with is that I've thrown open too many doors and have to figure out which ones are the ones I'm interested in moving forward with. I may or may not get around to organizing them into themes before I post this. Just want to get things down while they're still quite fresh.


So what is the piece about? Let's start with what seems to be there based on observations and audience feedback:

• pretty singing
• minimal, often unconfident live performance
• slippage between live and recorded image. What is actually happening live and what is pre-recorded? (I even saw one woman taking the headphones off in the middle of watching it, which was fantastic)
• immersion of viewer through soundtrack
• alienation of viewer through trapping them in a corner behind a camera and forcing them to watch complicated video piece on a small screen
• a layered piece that was read on different levels by different people
• a vague sense that there was "alot there" but no one at the actual performance who could put a finger on it
• from feedback pre-performance "extremely rich" area to explore. Yes, I'm finding it overwhelmingly rich!
• putting the audience in my shoes behind the camera
• confusing the role of the viewer to those around them who think that the person behind the camera is actually filming. As a result, preventing many possible viewers from approaching the camera and watching the piece.

What I wanted it to be about, or things that I put in there on purpose:

• embodiment in space of both viewer and performer
• performer highlights interesting aspects of space through movement and vocalization
• video reinforces these
• performer ultimately becomes integrated into the different sensory layers of the space
• viewer becomes embodied simultaneously through immersion and alienation. When they walk away from the piece, they have a heightened awareness of the space.
• 3 phases to video that shifted mood, but also shifted weight of foreground/background between the video and the physical space
• mirroring 3 phases live

What seems to be ideal viewing moment for this piece?

• when the place has some people milling around, or walking from place to place
• when I appear live in the space as well, especially when singing. even if the singing isn't the same tune as the video piece.

If I did piece like this again, conditions I would insist upon:

• layered space: a place where there are people walking through, different points of entry and exit. I tried the piece in 5 different locations, both at WCA and at the Nunnery. The most interesting ones had people in different planes from the viewer walking through the frame. The 2 locations that were enclosed rooms were pretty boring.
• 2-3 days in the space before the performance to rehearse and plot out performance sound and movement. The performance side of things continued to be weak for the whole weekend. My performance skills are at a point where I still need to have a clear plan in place ahead of time. I can't wing it and hope for the best, even if I love improv. Sticking to a path and controlled movement on Sunday made me feel like I was starting to get there, and allowed me to find a good pitch to my performance over time. I was hoping that having all this time would do exactly that. However, in the future, I need to have this time BEFORE the actual performance!
• 2-3 full days of shooting with rough edits performed each evening or on the fly. Although I felt good about the work I did in the Nunnery. I ended up limiting my possibilities by only taking half a day there. Things that I thought would work together when reviewing the tape in the space ended up not working together at all. Editing is so easy with final cut these days!

But what exactly is the main point of interest or focal point of the piece?

• is it about the space?
• is it about the performer? in the foreground or the background?
• the viewer? alienated or immersed?
• the articulation of space through movement? sound? alienation? interruption? integration?
• my embodiment as a performer within my body? surroundings? in relation to the technology? the viewer?

Other things I felt or heard repeatedly:

• When I think back on this weekend, I feel like I'm playing a conceptual tennis match. Except no one's keeping score.
• live performance was chaos until Sunday. On Sunday, I had time to find something to do with myself that seemed to hold things together more. I created a walk for myself around the gallery walking backwards and forwards as if I were another person just looking at the art. However, once in a while I would stop and study something that wasn't the art, or start singing. If someone blocked my path, I reversed direction.It was interesting and seemed to make the piece hold together better.
• the whole piece "worked" on Sunday, but what do I mean by that?
• at what point do I give up and get someone who is a trained performer to do it for me? This question makes me really angry. I feel like there is some assumption that if you're not really good, you shouldn't put yourself in your work. How will I learn if I'm not in the work? And yet ultimately, when does my lack of performance skill get in the way of me communicating what I want to with the piece? I can't answer this right now. Still narrowing down what the piece is about?
• is it really important that people sit behind a camera? What would be other ways of doing this?
• soundtrack was fab.
• I realized that I was most interested in the sonic dimension of the space.
• I am also most interested in exploring the sonic dimension of video. I think. The one piece of this I can clarify right now is that I think the true power of video rests in its marriage of both sound and image.
• most people wanted to sit with the piece longer than one cycle. This is good. However, the underlying criticism of this is that I should have made the piece longer, chosen maybe 1 mood, or made each section longer.
• The discussion on Saturday kept coming back to the idea of audience expectations. This was most interesting because it made me think about all the unexpected, or extraneous things that audience members might focus on with my piece. For example, the whole thing about people spending ages in the space and not touching my piece because they didn't really it was a piece and the signifiers for a camera on a tripod are not to approach. This throws a whole new debate about my piece out there. And I need to be careful about such things because it can detract from what I am more interested in communicating with people.
• The other thing that comes to mind about being trapped behind the camera is that one of the interesting things about Janet Cardiff's video walks was that even though the viewer is behind the camera, their bodies are in motion, which seems like a freer way of experiencing the piece and perhaps enhances the viewer's embodiment of the piece. (I do believe Harriet made some comment along these lines when she viewed my test piece!)
  
• The piece was TOO hidden. I didn't want the performance to be in your face. But I wanted people to be aware of it. People were aware of my presence more than they were of the video. Sadly, my presence was nowhere near as interesting as the video.
• Do I need to be in the space to make the piece "work"? Are people walking away with what I intended when my presence in real time isn't there?
• Do I need to control when the viewers encounter me in the physical space?
• Is it interesting to have it unravel completely differently for every viewer?

It's all Geek to me!

I'm researching tools that should help me realize my vision of a live melee comprised of body-based sounds and images (keep those fart jokes to yourself!)

Although there has been discussion previously, today is serious Day One on that journey. So much so that I'm unable to communicate what I've learned so far.

I will post links:

Object oriented programming software:
Isadora - http://www.troikatronix.com/isadora.html
Max/MSP - http://www.cycling74.com/products/maxmsp
PureData - http://puredata.info/

Microcontroller hubs, boards, something like that... (laugh now, but in a month I'll be looking at you as if you're a luddite because you don't know what I'm talking about):
Arduino - http://arduino.cc/
Eroktronix - http://www.eroktronix.com/

Here's my favorite quote of the day:
So if you yearn for an electromagnetic catapult that flings jelly at the audience every time you rattle your tambourine, or a USB incense burner which radiates progressively stronger smells as the temperature in the church hall rises, Pure Data can help you achieve this!

****YES!****



I just wrote, re-wrote, and deleted a paragraph of panicky apprehension about going down this route. I realize that I need to stave off the panic until I really invest the time to at least try to learn some of this because I can see that proficiency in this type of programming will lead to lots of interesting possibilities moving forward.

Next steps:
- try these things out
- understand enough to be able to ask the right questions to get the help from others that I need.

Phillip Glass: Music in 12 Parts performance

Summary from Barbican website:
Music in 12 Parts, a four-hour music marathon composed for the Philip Glass Ensemble, is both a massive theoretical exercise and a deeply engrossing work of art.

The score is the culmination of Glass' explorations and theories on repetition, and is considered to be a seminal composition that defined minimalistic music in the 20th Century.

Another trip to the Barbican without a ticket. This time I ended up in the 4th row ust off the edge of Glass' keyboard. I had a prime vantage point to witness the human side of Glass' work. I've seen a bunch of his pieces performed live, but at 4 hours, I think a major component of the performance of Music in 12 parts is the durational experience of all participants.

It was amazing to witness Glass lose his formality and get swept deeper and deeper into the rhythms and texture. And to watch all of the performers ride the waves of intense concentration, exhaustion, elation, confusion. Mind you, every performer was an extremely accomplished musician and/or composer in their own right, so the talent was impressive to watch in their commitment and competence.

What I found most interesting is the choice to perform everything live. Glass' music is often seen as being almost inhuman in its mechanical repetition and insistent rhythms. However, there were points last night where the musicians simply couldn't go on and for the first time I saw another side to Glass' compositions - the test of just how far you can remain in a precise regimen before the human needs to break the cycle (usually for breath!) The breaks, occasionally getting lost in the score, etc. were as much a part of the performance at the end. I haven't read about Glass at all, so I don't know if this is anything he's interested in. In this age of looping and pre-recorded playback in concerts, I'd be very surprised by his choice to do this all live if he didn't want those hiccups to appear. Will research this a little bit.

I was reminded about how much I think that Glass' music is like a physical object, rather than just sound. There is so much weight and mass to parts of it.

There are tons of people who will happily sit and listen to this really "high brow" music for 4 hours. Lots of folks even brought picnics for the interval! I needed this reaffirmation because I think I'm mostly interested in the potential of the black box and want to explore abstract performance. I feel like alot of the attitude towards this kind of performance has come from not having a chance to experience it or find a point of access to it. <-- something I need to find back up for aside from personal experience Having all that time in the dark listening to the slow movements of the piece, I had loads of time to come up with some ideas that I want to try try out in performance. I'm finding that most of the ideas that pop into my head these days are more about physical composition - set elements, fabric or costume, sound. It's exciting, but also intimidating because it's going into areas that I will have to seek loads of technical advice on. And on a totally humorous and random note: There were some guys taking a photo together and blocking the aisle at the start of the main interval. I was right behind them when the photo was being snapped, so I made a face at the camera. My partner then told me that one of the guys was Leonard Cohen. I ruined someone's fan "buddy photo" with Leonard Cohen! Heh.