Post gig autopsy

So I had my AV gig at The Loft this weekend just past.  It was great to have The Superusers, Botborg and Hetleveiker along for the ride and they all performed magnificent sets.

The four studies I performed (in order) were:

A Study in AV Spatialisation

I used VPT for the first time! While I had some definite teething problems with the mask and midi presets not saving, setting up ready to go before the gig allowed it all to go pretty smoothly during the performance.  Video is from Artmatic – sound is a remix from Remnants track “For the Shepherd”  There is no direct technical link between the video and sound, rather I prefer for that link to be established in performance and in the link between artist, artwork and audience.

A Study in AV Transduction

With this piece i’m demonstrating the practice of converting audio to current and transducting that current to video by way of a Synchronator.  I send 3 separate channels with pure waveforms that are modulated in various ways to the R, G and B channels which get converted into video.  Unfortunately the presets failed to save (I see a correlation here… something is up with Max saving presets… any ideas?) so this was a really boring set… most disappointing considering my pre-gig sound-check of this was awesome.   In addition the feed going to the projector via a digital vision mixer came out really washed out and bland.   I will rework this using a CRT television and upload when done.

A Study in AV Translation

For this one I used still images, something AV artists rarely seem to do.  Harking back to notions of visual composition established via Xenakis and his Upic system, these images were translated by Metasynth which generates audio based on compositional parameters that I have set (in this case it is a 1:24 ratio).  The idea was that the audience can see the connection between image and how it is translated into sound.  This piece needs more work… at the moment it is quite boring and the Elder Futhark rune system i’m using as a compositional device doesn’t really translate that well it would seem via technology (and rainbow colours!)  I will upload a video when I complete a better version of this study.  The idea is solid but the material is still lacklustre.

A Study in Cross-Modal Binding

Based on the writings of Mitchell Whitelaw on AV i’ve appropriated his term for this study which hits on the most basic use of A+V that i’ve demonstrated before.  Coming more from the Live Cinema angle I have a series of videos culled from a year of using my Canon 550d in a diaristic fashion inspired by Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage.  The audio is mixed with the video in realtime.  Any and all meaning derived from the work is in the mind’s eye of the beholder… an open negotiation between artist and audience i’m actually quite into.

Thanks to Andrew Thomson for looking after the cameras during the performance.