O VHS!
I finally, finally found the VHS of an old performance I did with Teresa Marrin Nakra last week, and have now safely converted it to a .mov.
The music itself isn’t the most awesome thing in the world, but I certainly am glad that proof of this exists…I really need something from this to put in my portfolio! As I try to write more thoughtfully about this project, it becomes clearer how much this served as an introduction to the world of physical computing and, in a sense, the process involved in working with emerging technology.
The carpet itself was very cool but a bit buggy. Factors like heat and prior use would seriously impact the consistency of the output, and it led to some frustrating but now-familiar debugging issues. Other things, like Teresa’s imminent pregnancy and my own unfamiliarity with the medium made this a frustrating project at the time. Thankfully, Tim Ledlie was around to handle the software side of the debugging and help me retain a sense of perspective.
We only had a week from start to finish to make our performances, and the title of mine (DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME, I’LL BE FINE) comes from the sampleset I was using at the time. Snips from Disney’s version of “Peter and the Wolf” and R+H’s “South Pacific” combined with pretty abstract (and, upon later reflection, boring) drum and toneloops to make an endless, atmospheric performance that did not go very many places.
I think the best thing about this project was finally getting to just play the damn carpet. I spent many, many hypercaffeinated hours before that night pressing on the thing and listening for trouble, and even watching it reminds me of what fun it was to make sounds with something so malleable and strange.
Tags: AKA, audio, performance, theory