Re: [-empyre-] live performance vs. studio/other

[gbach@csulb.edu (Glenn Bach)]

John K. wrote:
>> Besides the environmental differences (being able to sit in your 
>> living room and listen to a live performance is completely
>> different than listening at a venue along with an audience), 
>> there's the obvious ability on the part of the artist to endlessly tweak
a studio recording. Live 
>> shows display what an artist can do with a limited amount of time
>>  *in realtime*. There's no going back once a decision has been made.
Even the most composed piece of music becomes an improvisation the moment
something goes wrong -- or simply not according to plan.
>> 


A couple of things about the live thing.  As a visual artist who also
embraces sound, I currently prefer not to mix my visual work with my sound,
simply because I view my sound work as very visual in and of itself, both
as a performance and as an exercise in deep, imaginative listening.  Maybe
it's the minimalist in me, but I think that the laptop performance has a
certain meditative elegance to it.  The laptop performer (me, for example)
up there alone may not be the most spectacular thing to look at, but I
don?t think it needs to be.  My fiance and I had a chat after one of our
recent house concerts, and if I may, here is my transcription of some of
her thoughts: "We have to reexamine the visual language of live music.	A
musician?s action causes a reaction in the audience, so when there are a
lot of sounds and noise coming from the stage but very little movement (a
mouse click there, a hand on the chin), the audience has to fill in the
gaps with their imagination.  In this way the crowd performs as well.  It
is a form of imitation: if the performer is very quiet and still, then the
audience will mimic the performer?s stillness."

So, for me, I prefer to keep the non-sound visuals out of my performances. 
I am open, however, to this changing over time, and I certainly am open to
collaborating with other visual artists.  Back in the day I used to spin
records to a visual accompaniment of friends? film loops and slide
projections.  Just recently at a concert I gave in Eureka, I performed to a
melange of video and computer monitors and projections that the organizing
team spent hours preparing.  Perhaps I?m at the earlier stage that John K.
mentioned where he was concentrating on bringing his audio-only work up to
speed.

With microsound, ambient, and especially field recordings, the music has
very strong, visually suggestive qualities that I am interested in
exploring.  The vast spatiality of microspheres that Trace discusses
combined with the almost photorealist places fleshed out by field
recordings prove a fertile ground upon which the audience (and myself as
performer) can concoct highly personal experiences.  A friend shared with
me the incredible imagistic journey she took during one of my performances,
including wild animals and biomorphic architecture; a fantastical dream
logic far-removed from what I would have thought my music suggested.  I?m
glad, for that concert at least, that I didn?t try to launch some kind of
projected images that might have interfered with her idiosyncratic
experience.

I?m also lucky, in that I?ve had very appreciative audiences willing to
suspend their reliance on the visual spectacle to engage in deep listening,
with eyes open or closed.


Alan Sondheim wrote:
>> If the body is central to the dance, to the rave, to music - only if,
and
>> it's debatable - what role does it play in microsound?

I think that the body is very important to microsound, at least to the
quiet strains.	The intimacy of the still performer serves as a foil to the
athletic and orgasmic movements of pop music, in that the laptop
performer?s movements stand for nothing more than a deep engagement in the
compositional/performative act.  If the audience is open to such a thing,
this concentration on the moment can result in contemplation and meditation
in the synaesthetic worlds suggested by the music itself.  For me, this is
enough, the blank wall of zen mentioned by John K.  If other visual aids
are needed, let them enhance the spirit of the moment rather than distract.
 Perhaps over time I will discover the right combinations of my visual art
that will work in situations like this.

G.