Output details

By-Product

An 8’ mixed-media work conceived in collaboration with Amsterdam-based ensemble Duo X and artist Mark Melvin during an artistic residency in Tábor, Czech Republic. First performed in public at Berkeley and UC Davis, California (April 2009). Featured in the “Urban Doldrums” event, Tokyo Wonder Site, Hongo, Japan; Theater Kikker, Utrecht; Badkuyp Karnatic Lab, Amsterdam (all 2010); University of New Mexico (2013).

Scored for 4-channel electronics, alto saxophone, bass clarinet and video, the piece addresses the potential problems of integrating moving image within live musical performance by adopting a collaborative strategy that considers the screen and its content as part of the performing ensemble. Here the notion of the live and the mediatised, inherent in the existing symbiotic relationship between musician and instrument (human and machine) serves as the basis for a series of audiovisual (virtual) ‘mirrors’ which expand and interact with the piece’s ‘real’ components: the musicians. The ‘waste products’ of live performance, e.g. unwanted key noise, breath sounds – commonly edited out in production yet characterising the ‘liveness’ of performance – form the basis of the piece’s electronic sound; its scored material combines drones and glitch-like oscillations, commonly associated with electronic sound, with improvised ‘noise’. The innovative use of five video projections, strikingly outnumbering the two musicians onstage, extends the duo’s visual presence by incorporating footage of their instruments as disassembled constructs being performed, sped-up sequences of the musicians’ eye and forehead movements recorded while they practise along with footage of the performance venue’s exterior. What results is a discrete form of live chamber music installation that engages with Eco’s concept of the ‘work-in-movement’ while establishing an audiovisual polyphony that renders the moving image component integral to the dynamic of the work.

“By-Product” has featured in research papers at Cinesonika, Derry/Londonderry (2013), Music and Moving Image, NYU Steinhardt (2008) and Principles of Music Composing, Vilnius (2012).