#120

Oh my. I am starting to flood this thread, sorry about that, it’s just very exciting to see (for the lack of being able to hear) everyones ideas around this.

I am reminded of a performance I once saw where the performer didn’t move his body to the beat and didn’t smile or frown but merely played his music. He allowed space to exist for the music to occupy. It was a very moving experience. A performance in service of the music. Not entertainment in the general sense but a sonically-centered experience for the audience.

Thinking about it now, it was obviously a choice that the performer had to make. It could be read as a visual choice to not obscure the music. In the same way playing in the dark like Autechre is a strong visual element of their performance.

I think however one might look at it, sound doesn’t exist in a vacume and is essentially something we engage with through our bodies and not just our ears.

Maybe body > ears > eyes?

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#121

When Curtis Roads performs, he’s performing the spatialization. The space and the audio system are the things that vary from one performance to another, so that’s the part he performs. His composition process simply isn’t real-time. Far too many minute decisions at microsecond scales, no human could do that on stage.

If you ever have the opportunity to see him perform, take it. It’s a unique experience.

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#122

My wife and I were talking about this last night, and - being film people - it struck us that a focus on gear at shows could likely be an easy thing to fall back on in a predominantly visual culture – music, as an ephemeral thing with its own distinct sense of narrative is just a lot harder to talk about for many folks, including myself. The tyranny of the visual!

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#123

yeah, gear is one way to build the “trust” thing, it’s like crypto…
composition and performance are different animals as well, at least for me. but improving the process around composition enables more freedom for performance, and ultimately they can join at some level

#124

What’s great about these discussions too, is that there’s no real answer. We all have a different background that shapes our priorities and values in how we evaluate art. :slight_smile:

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#125

Mark Fell might be one of my fav electronic music performers

Laptop sets can go a bunch of ways and have different contexts. Diffusion/specialization, for example, I find to be a radically different experience/context regardless of the point of origin of the sound. Likewise laptops in dance/DJ music feel different than at a noise show. Likewise laptop music as a kind of anti-performance meant to illicit reflection on cultures of performance in general, etc…

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#126

questions from the audience
often are about things
which can be described by language :slightly_smiling_face:

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#127

In the low-bandwidth-days of ~2001 a friend spending time in japan shared a video he shot of a performance while he was there. It probably took an hour to transfer, he talked it up the whole time as the most virtuosic laptop performance he’d ever seen, how he’d taken the instrumentalism of the laptop to new places etc etc. (This is how I remember it, anyway.) Anyway the punchline was that it was a 5 minute video of a young man sitting nearly motionless in front of a laptop. Of course he sent it because it was such a beautiful set (I wish I still had the clip) and he knew I didn’t care if he was waving his hands over a magic sparkling bush or sitting perfectly still. Still, zing!

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#128

well, at least it’s good that people have opinions and ideas on what to use… I remember using reason and plogue bidule as some kind of digital modular system.
certainly in the hands of the “artist”, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a laptop or hardware based gear. but in terms of performance, if you compose by editing wave files by hand, it will be quite an interesting show. maybe that’s something to try :slight_smile:

#129

And two iPads on the side!

#130

Exactly…on the side…of an 18 panel Buchla which is the primary instrument, not hunched behind a laptop clicking a mouse and checking her email!

#131

And is the emotional difference between this, and someone having a laptop on the side and working with controllers that you have a clearer knowledge of what the instrument is?

I find this topic so interesting!

How would you rate these scenarios?

  1. Someone sitting towards the audience with a 9u eurorack you can only see the back off.

  2. Someone sitting behind a laptop clicking away.

  3. Someone having a laptop on the side working with controllers where you dont know what a knob does before the musician touches it. You can see all the controllers.

  4. Someone having a box with knobs and buttons and a raspberry pi inside running a pd patch they have made.

  5. Someone having a skiff with an Er-301 + some few controller modules.

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#132
  1. Not seeing the performer at all, like Fransisco Lopez, Autechre, Tim Hecker?
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#133

I thought I would share this video of Loscil that I saw sometime ago. I would definitely go to a show like this and enjoy it. Seems the audience enjoyed it too and was really engaged (there is a lot of panning around so you can see them).

Fascinating too because the show isn’t in the dark.

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#134

I also like Jan Jelinek’s approach - projecting an overhead shot of his setup so the audience has a window into what he’s doing. This is something I’d like to try at some point.

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#135

Pointless, a pitch black performance is not a performance, it’s an installation that belongs in a museum or art gallery. They might think that is quite smart and high art, but what I feel they are doing is patronising the audience. Its inferring that audiences that go to the shows don’t fully listen to the music and that you can concentrate and listen to the music better in the dark. They are trying to teach you how to listen. Except I really do know how to listen and paid a small fortune to see and hear you play, but now only getting 50% :slight_smile: if I want dark, I’ll close my eyes. Its not big, it’s not clever, it’s not even being different or original, it’s showing contempt to the audience. The performer might as well not turn up to the venue. This is getting to the point were you might as well email an algorithm or leave a recording and instructions for the venue to start up.

btw I love Autechre and Hecker music. I’m not criticising their music, but seriously, i do not want to see any of them live in the dark and be taught how to listen. I’d rather stay home and listen to the record mainly because I’m old and can see through the hype :slight_smile: .

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#136

Along these lines, more recently in the last few years I have sometimes just set up in the middle of the room and encourage people to stand around the table. If people want to look they can, but they don’t have to. The benefit also is that you can set up in a way where you can hear what the audience hears and usually that helps the performer a bit. The drawback is sometimes people start trying to chat with you in the middle of the set.

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#137

I’d love to try that at some point with a multiple speaker, surround setup (quad or more).

#138

I feel live performance is about taking a risk and witnessing and listening to something unique and edgy - a one time deal. I associate solo laptop performers (no controller, + mouse are top of that list) with emails + work and performers hidden behind a really secure safety net, playing it safe, with an inability to take a risk, to take a chance, in a live environment.

This is the sort of thing I like. He’s not playing in the dark and he’s playing his instrument. And I guarantee it wouldn’t sound the same if he played it again.

I don’t want to see a laptop anywhere on stage to tbh. They are performance killers that do zero for the live experience other than make bedroom artists feel very comfortable on stage.

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#139

It’s ok to have your preferences, but I’d encourage you not to write it off completely, especially those working in the ‘algorave’ scene with tidalcycles and live coding. There’s plenty of risk and exciting things happening, at least in my mind.

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