When an instrument is being designed and built, the process is marked by long iterations. The instrument creator makes something, then a musician tries it out, then its worked on a bit more and over the years an instrument evolves. In our case, this process has tiny iterations and the instrument is essentially built on the fly….
The live painting by Fernando, as well as the live collage and animation is an input into the instrument, kinda like the visions and emotions a violinist might experience when playing. The software by Dave and his curation of relationships between inputs and outputs, as well as content, drives the evolution of the instrument. My drumming provides a gestural rhythmic connection to music that people can relate to. Kevin’s musical passages are picked live to play off of the imagery and each other. Then there is our collective communication happening on top, built from practicing together. We are in sum an evolving video instrument.
The last time I did live video was with Vidvox at the EMPAC opening weekend party, where we backed Madlib and J Rocc.
Dave and Jack, the founders of Vidvox, wanted to use the drum kit from the game Rock Band as a controller. They knew I play drums in Restys so they invited me to join them. At first I simply unleashed my muscle memory on it. Then, we started to find specific mappings that went along with certain synths Dave was creating. We practiced for a week to a playlist of Madlib and Juseboxxx and developed certain topography of the performance. We had a color bar sequencer triggered by me with song-specific color pallets. Another program allowed me to jump forward and backward through a video clip when I hit the drum pads. The video was an in-camera edit shot through the EMPAC construction site that used the “Reveal and Conceal” technique developed by LMNOPF.
The EMPAC party was totally awesome, and we got to hang with Madlib. W00t!