new work on tour - RetroInterrupt 2010
RetroInterrupt is a realtime audio visual performance.
The performance exposes further explorations around recording/remembering, analysis, cross-domain manipulation and resynthesis in sound. In this case using realtime computer music performance as a means of exploration or reference. My goal is to apply transformations on sound and visuals simultaneously , partly indeterminant, sometimes refined, in an attempt to analyse, transform and stimulate oblique sensory awareness of transience, movement and somewhat decadent experience.
The music generating algorithms are the latest generation of my ‘NeverEngine’ Kyma based sound designs. They create a rhythm based music of self-similar narratives and technological flows, a symbolic musical language that maps, or indexes, personal experiential capital built over many years in the underground electronic music scene.
For performing realtime computer music, I had already decided to continue using only software control. The next step for me was to experiment with the accepted standards of realtime computer music control screens. I made a move away from using conventional, non-emotive Graphic User Interfaces to control the parameters of my music generating programs on stage. In this new show, the parameters are being controlled by concentrated attention on a realtime video animation which I can influence using a few key commands.
This decision makes the resynthesis through the process of live performance, more open to indeterminant alternatives.
Using the Processing language, I programmed interactive code enabling performance decisions to be concentrated on the manipulation of video pixels (the linear data representation of digital images). The code then maps the resulting datastreams over to Kyma to influence the dynamics of the music performance. The RetroInterrupt refers to the roots of this type of realtime digital image manipulation, a technique that can be traced back to Amiga ‘blitter chip’ animations of the early 90s.
All this results in a kind of decadent graphic interface for controlling the music, one which melts and slips in and out of abstraction, in and out of linearity and illustration and can be shared. In terms of a music performance, this approach encourages much more listening from myself and perhaps the audience too, and may be stimulating the sonic dialogue in other ways I am yet unaware of. As a side effect of the RetroInterrupt realtime video, if projected, it also functions as a freaky and involving visual stage augmentation of the laptop music performance.
CRISTIAN VOGEL - RetroInterrupt
13th August 2010 - Krake Festival , Suicide Circus, Berlin DE
20th August 2010 - Elektronisk Jazz Juice , Aarhus DK
26th September 2010 - KISS2010 Rhiz Bar , Vienna OST
15th October 2010 - Tots Sants Group Show, EatMeatRaw Gallery, Barcelona
