Last week I went into the performance lab in LCC to finally record the performance of my creative sound work. I took my equipment and set the visual score/photo slides in the projector, while performing as I mentioned in passed blog posts, I used the photo slideshow containing my analogue pictures and used it as score to record in only one take my piece. Prior to the recording, I found this performance by upsammy for the Dutch festival Dekmantel Connects 2020, where she only uses an octatrack in her set. The performance is also mirrored by great video game like visuals, that probably where created in blender, that add a glitch and futuristic aesthetic to the performance. This video inspired me to further expand this project to also use visuals, maybe get some knowledge in Touch Designer and create a rough experimental audio reactive patch. Also I found upsammy’s performance so varied and texturally rich, I thought that it was quite impressive how much she did just using the octatrack.
The following image is my layout towards recording the set. I placed my synth and my sampler in a table in front of the big screen and when ready to record used the main computer and the interface. As previously mentioned I record it in only one take to prevail the performative aspect of it. Now looking back that was a bit annoying as I struggled in some of the transitions, from picture to picture. But well, as this work was a research into alternative modes of composing and performing, failure and trial and error are important building blocks. I would like to expand this work with now using audio reactive visuals, I would also like to learn how to create visuals and I’m curious to see if anyhow it will also affect my sound composition. Also I came out with the name for this project: Pigmented Ghost, this name comes from the idea that I’m adding colour to the picture and because they are black and white, it resembles like a format ghost. At the same time I think the name creates imaginary of the soul and the afterlife, that where never an objective when developing this idea, but at the end a great extra feature.
