The Architect?

I have been watching alot of sci-fi now I've been thinking about this project and have been noticing some issues that seem to reoccur. Firstly, the skepticism and suspicious way authority is questioned, secondly the faith in humanity or the faith that man-kind will always have a saviour.

After a session with Jonathan and a tutorial with Lamberto I have a thought of a way of realising the concept. I am going to enclose 'the artist' or 'the saviour' in perplex screens shaped in an octagon (represent the cacoons from the matrix that kept the humans alive in the human farms!!) separating the artist from the spectator. Inside the octagon the performer has the role of the generator - triggering and/or reacting to the audio and visual material. The octagon will be rigged up to infra red proximity sensors (I have chosen these because they emit a single beam which can actually be shown to the audience by means of a laser pen- smoke will have to be involved!). There will be visual material presented by CCTV monitors- there will be 4 to 8 of these screens and the signal to them will be controlled by the performer. I propose to scramble the signal of all of the video streams until the performer gets into close proximity to the associated sensor then the signal unscambles the closer the performer gets to the sensor. The visual material and audio material will not be from the same source.

The original idea was sculting space in order to sculpt sound, after a tutorial with Lamberto we approached this issue and came up with ideas about a block of sound would begin the performance and the sculptor would use movement (detected by the sensors) to add and subtract audio elements. Revealing sounds hidden under the wall of sound, adding or subtracting certain sounds to the mix. We also discussed generating pulses or rhythms by the movement which I feel will be interesting in a real time interaction. I recently read somewhere that the city hums at 50Hz due to the AC-powered equipment- perhaps I will start with this.

Technically I am apprehensive about the project and there are a few problems with the arrangement of the piece that will need to be experimented with. such as the location of the CCTV monitors - it is important for the performer to see them in order to interact but as the performer in behind the screens this proves problemmatic.

For now I am going to gather sound material to experiement with and attempt to produce a mock-up of the installation in order to begin composing. I was also thinking about the idea of site-specificality and thought it would perhaps be benficial to compose in the Recital Hall for the recital hall to enhance the piece as it would be tailored to the space.