Performance

A few weeks back I had the invitation to DJ for a photography exhibition in the Copeland Gallery in Peckham. For the set I decided to only play ambient music tracks, this was the first time I’ve ever chosen this music genre to perform with. As normally a gallery space has a quite calm environment, ambient music suited perfectly for the space and mirrored the pieces exhibited. The music in the event worked similar to Erik Satie’s Musique d’ameublement, it tinted the room as a perfume, it didn’t drawn the publics attention away from the photography but just sat comfortably in the back, setting a calm environment. DJing ambient music is quite similar to listening to it, not a lot of focus is needed to keep it going but in the case you want to focus in it, the music will provide rich sonic depth. This made my experience extremely pleasant when performing, helping me connect with the audience in a subconscious level. The picture below shows the set-up of my set and the gallery.

The only certain thing I have about my creative sound piece is that I want to create a performance. My recent experience playing live (both in the gallery and in Loop cafe) have both been extremely pleasurable and changed my mode of listening, I want to explore other ways of performing and utilise performance as a way of composition. After the experience in the Copland gallery, I decided to create a performance of ambient music for the creative sound work, but now instead of mixing I would use my live setup. The setup will enable me to use my own sonic resources and to improvise with them, deconstructing and manipulating recordings and synthesis to create the aesthetic of ambient music.

Generative music has been a recurring tool I have used in my work, utilising it both for installations and compositions. I like to think that creating art generatively is similar to collaborating with the technology you have instead of using it as a tool. I’ve never tried to perform before using generative techniques but it seems as the perfect time now to experiment with it. Ambient music has an origin in generative practices, for example Brian Eno experimenting with tape looping, so I guess the performance style and music genre will be compatible. Going back to the theme of virtuosity that I mentioned in a past post, exploring performance through the use of generative techniques and managing to make cohesive piece could be considered quite challenging. When thinking of performing a piece of music with an instrument, what comes to mind is the physical motion of plucking, slapping, blowing or touching an interface that will because of its acoustical or technological nature create a sound. When performing with a generative system, not just the actual timbre of the sound can be played with but also the probability and algorithm in which sound can be triggered or modulated, creating another dimension to manipulate within a performance.

To make this generative performance possible, a lot of things will need to be pre-composed before the actual event. But once in the performance there will be space for improvisation. What I find appealing of this approach in my performance is that in the future I could play again with this same system and material and get different results. The next step towards achieving this will be learning how I could implement generative processes in my Octatrack and make them communicate with my synth.