The Performing Audiovisualist » ACMC

Towards a Definition of The Performing Audiovisualist

lb — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:15:50 +0000

There it is… my first paper. Delivered to the Australasian Computer Music Conference in August 2009 and published as part of the proceedings.

Three months on I see it as not so much a proof of concept as it is an evocation of the reason for a program of research on the nature of audiovisual performance in the now.

It is a confused document, lurching through the centuries making disparate links here and there between different media forms and approaches. Well this is the point!

At the moment we have an excess of example with few historical threads to link the divergent approaches.

Yet the grant funded artist uses fundamentally similar tools as the underground noise musician.

What similarities exist between Peter Greenaway’s live Tulse Luper (remix) project and what Scott Sinclair is achieving through his Company Fuck performances?

I’m going to delve into both in further blog posts – don’t want to peak too early.

Just thought i’d say for now – these new opportunities are riding on centuries of live art and decades of performative research. As the technology becomes more utilitarian, so the approaches to the use of technology in performance become more interesting. This is where I believe the story is. There is little “new” about any of this, but now many more artists are encouraged to develop a synchresis of sound and vision, a dual mode dialogue that may hopefully assist in doing the one thing that artists throughout the centuries have attempt to do – communicate.

In my solo AV practice i’m learning how to do this more effectively – and I plan to make many mistakes – generate all the tedious and pointless novelty examples of AV inclusion possible – in order to strive for a greater unity of expression. Learning to fail and learning to learn from that failure.

Just before signing off on this quick (and incredibly late) post – I’d like to say that the following video is a pretty evocative example of AV that is both engaging and embodied while demonstrating a level of practiced skill that used to (in theory) signify the value of a live performer. Something that Quartz Composer patches don’t tend to really bring to a performance.

How to design a digital media instrument with such expressability?

Performance Experiments Phase 1: N4rgh1l3

lb — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:33:48 +0000

As mentioned before on this blog, N4rgh1l3 is a collaborative project with Andrew Thomson who also works with Joe Musgrove in Biffplex. We have similar tastes in music and movies and it seemed logically that we should help swell the artist/band scene in Brisbane with yet another side project. Initially though our collaborations lacked a definable characteristic to separate us from what we do with others. It wasn’t until much later on that we twigged about our mutual love of abstract sound and image, and that this might form the basis for an interesting, challenging and diverse performance approach.

Birthing N4rgh1l3 within the Audiopollen / Other Film scenes would seem to be an important contextual consideration as our work, while using digital tools, is heavily influenced by Visual Music pioneers like Len Lye and the experimental film works of Stan Brakhage. Response to our performances within this scene have always been encouraging and positive. Then we played at the Australasian Computer Music Conference…

N4rgh1l3 at ACMC 2009 from Performing Audiovisualist on Vimeo.

In attendance were about a dozen of our friends, sitting up the back like good little emos, who all seemed to agree that this was our best performance. I felt it was our smoothest set so far due to a substantial overhaul in the weeks prior to the performance that resulted in a full AV collaborative performance model allowing us to share control equally.

Response from the ACMC attendees was not so positive. Many were concerned that they could not understand the interaction between sound and image, that it was boring and seemed fairly static. Peter McIllwain, lecturer of composition at Monash University was concerned at the lack of dynamism and that there was no symbolic energy transfer between sound and image. Bad feedback like this makes for great research fodder and extra considerations. Where our comfort zone obviously exists in a scene familiar with our cultural references, a different set audience and different circumstances compromise what we consider to be key features of our art. Quite simply, our work is designed for darkened spaces and mesmirism; we are not a backing band and this isn’t wallpaper. There is a forced engagement required in setting up the space, to ensure the audience will sit and stare, become entranced and then note the changes. A question then might be: should we change our setup to suit a different context or should we demand the right context for a successful performance.

From a performance perspective i’m happy to keep moving forward from where we are. If nothing else the current framework is fun to perform with; a pleasant replacement for the stress of loosely tieing disparate systems together into a cohesive work. Connecting a licenced with a demo version of Isadora via OSC allows us to work equally with the same material and oddly turns it into something like a game of Snap, parts being added and subtracted collaboratively in order to create a dialogue with the prepared materials. We are looking at touring a performance next year and the advancement of the system moves slowly forward towards an extensible design that can be used in a variety of situations.

Updates have dropped off lately as i’ve been shuffling paperwork (boo) Next blog will be an update including my paper and some information on my current concerns.

Performance Experiments Phase1: Surrogate Band

lb — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:24:45 +0000

Surrogate Band from Performing Audiovisualist on Vimeo.

A super early version of what could be considered granular video inspired by:

Granular Synthesis;
granular synthesis;
Phil Niblock’s Magic Sun film of Sun Ra;
Kutiman;
and the “Say No More” projects of Bob Ostertag.

Compositional Approach:

My goal was to create a performance system that could be ‘played’ more readily than most source-material centric AV works. Referencing the “Surrogate Band” concept used by Pink Floyd in The Wall (in the handful of original live concerts they opened with a fake Pink Floyd band hidden behind masks) the initial idea was to mix together sound/image of improvisers to form a cohesive piece. The work comments on some of the issues with audiovisual (particularly laptop) performance by recontextualising the gestures musicians employ in the generation of spontaneous sound as a writhing, sound activated collage. Real-time control of captured footage creates a dialogue with the “tense” of performance – the “now” that is “then” becomes a new “now” through the ability to improvise with arbitrary sequences channelled through a simple control mechanism / compositional system that defines the work.

Ok so enough blather… how does it work?

Performative Framework:

VDMX and Audiomulch

I found Isadora too slow to work with the source material in an incisive fashion and chose VDMX for its flexibility and Audiomulch to feed sound through two ‘dlgrains’ granular objects. As evidenced by the above screen grab, VDMX windows can be positioned to allow access to windows behind… important as I needed to see the dlgrains settings. The videos are step sequenced in VDMX and I have control (via NanoKontrol) of the speed and direction of the files. Mouse pointer is only used to change the step sequence, a series of key presses were programmed to cycle through the source footage. Video files were rendered with audio as photo jpeg 640×360 @ 59.94fps in order that I could slow the footage and still maintain quality – i’ve yet to experiment with whether this makes any perceivable difference. Sound from the videos was routed, via Soundflower, to the two dlgrains objects in Audiomulch. Unfortunately VDMX does not solve the problem of selective routing of audio from video files that plagues Isadora. So a stereo output is sent which is then split in mulch and returned as 4 mono signals. These signals are sent to the Audio Analysis tools in VDMX which are used to define the opacity of videos on each of the four layers. Sound then carries out to the PA by forwarding the analysed sound through from the AA tools to the soundcard. This can also be achieved by ‘listening’ to Soundflower output.

Thoughts:

On some levels (and at this early stage) the work has achieved all I wanted. Issues at this stage:

need more footage / performers for greater variety;
less need to control the dlgrains in real time as this is difficult to do – perhaps setting the metasurface in audiomulch to a series of recorded positions (value snapshots) which can then be interpolated between by connecting an x/y touch surface (either one of the iPhone OSC apps or the KP3 Kaosspad);
research the ability for similar value snapshots to be set in VDMX to streamline the change of materials;
consider implementing framework in Max5 / Jitter in order that a direct link between control data and audio can be made – also may allow for audio to be separated more effectively (having to reinstall Max5 as it seems I have only 3 Jitter objects… is this correct?)
without overcomplicating, ability to change transitions and layer opacities to vary the interaction between videos from a collage effect to other..?
I’ve been informed that Andrew Sorenson’s Impromptu may provide the ability to analyse and batch cut videos to make each sequence less arbitrary – this could be very useful as the “granularisation” of the video becomes more in depth;
provide some kind of data structure (based perhaps on histogram analysis) of the “energy” of both sound and image that can be interpreted and used within the performance.

When i’ve fine tuned this system I would like to put it to work as a live improvisation tool in sessions and performances with some of the improvisors I have recorded.

Next up… N4rgh1l3 and the balance of “art”, music and context.

Performance Experiments Phase1: introduction

lb — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:06:47 +0000

Well howdy!

Over the next three years I will periodically demonstrate my findings through a number of live audiovisual performance experiments, documenting my approaches and related issues.

The phases are as follows:

addressing my background in composition and performance and current approaches;
addressing the literature and assimilating theoretical concepts into performance practice;
addressing the case studies / approaches and concerns of other audiovisualists;
exhibition of works and findings.

Documentation will be uploaded to VIMEO for each phase and will be used to elaborate on blog postings discussing the likes of:

compositional and performative approaches;
audience and context
comparative works and inspiration;
technological affordances and impact;

plus whatever else seems relevant at the time.

So the first phase matched up with:

a performance as part of Tom Hall’s “Left of Left” exhibition at the Judith Wright Centre in Brisbane;

Left of Left performance poster c/o Tom Hall

two performances and the presentation of my paper at the Australasian Computer Music Conference 2009 here in Brisbane.

Australasian Computer Music Conference 2009 - conference.acma.asn.au

Here is the first phase worth of video material which I will discuss in the next few blogs. Get acquainted and I’ll be back soon with a post about the Left of Left performance.

chrs

][oyd

Travelling Audiovisualist

lb — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:49:25 +0000

First new post in a while; adopted an aura of silence during the hermetic construction of my methodological framework. Also have a paper accepted for the Australasian Computer Music Conference titled “Towards a definition of the Performing Audiovisualist” which I will post after i’ve completed the necessary revisions.

I’m trekking down to Melbourne this week; aside from catching up with some friends I have the following AV related itinerary:

http://www.acmi.net.au/synaesthesia_jeanpoole.aspx

http://www.federationsquare.com.au/index.cfm?pageID=373

http://www.thatsmelbourne.com.au/Whatson/ignite/Pages/ignite.aspx

http://www.acmi.net.au/light_in_winter_09.aspx

If anyone can think of anything else I must see…?

The blog will run hot following this little excursion.

I’m not going to Sydney this time around so i’m going to miss Eno’s 7 Gazillion Paintings projected on the Opera House. I’m hearing mostly snarky comments about it so far; any opinions from attendees are much appreciated.

In other news:

I just picked up a Kodak Zx1 so I can do portable documentation. As per expected it isn’t great in low light and stabilisation is an issue however the attachable hand grip from the Zoom H2 works well to mitigate my caffeine shakes. The main point of purchase is to provide a portable ‘everywhere i go’ video recorder to document moving textures and perhaps some riots.

Troy Sobotka used an earlier iteration of this device to produce this:

Quite impressed with the lack of movement jitter.

Oh well duty calls, let’s talk soon.