the hall of mirrors

["Jan Pek" <swirlee@angelfire.com>]

ok loopies, this is a synthesis of ideas: working on putting together a 
proposal. 

but the money situation is tight, so if anyone knows of any software 
development contract work, or multimedia installation work, i'd be into 
it, and it'd help me progress in my work. my portfolio is at 
http://www.geocities.com/jipekau

so here it is:

** the hall of mirrors: ***draft ideas

-provides a common language for improvisers playing together
- improvising not only the tones that make up phrases,
but also improvising the way phrases make up the structure of the piece

HOW

- phrases that are improvised from tones are themselves tones that can be 
played [drummed/danced/triggered] into larger phrases.

- any phrase that is played by an improviser becomes a tone in all the 
improvisers' palettes. 

- once a phrase is recorded and becomes a tone, it is not necessarily 
static. improvisers can evolve existing phrases (much like the way 
echoplex users overdub into existing loops, or the way keyboards 
multisample tones). only, if other phrases are build from those phrases, 
they automatically evolve. this is the hall of mirrors, where improvisers 
working together mirror each other's sound and use (abuse) it to create 
new ends.

sound exciting?

key issues: 

what user interfaces can be used to capture and retrigger phrases? how do 
different musicians expose and work with the common language to build and 
dissolve spontaneous structure?
   ideas:  pad triggers on floor for dancers that first record and then 
retrigger phrases. force on pad affects amplitude of phrases. keyboard 
interface for pianists, velocity affects amplitude of phrases.

how does the expressiveness of the improviser get translated when playing 
phrases?

  ideas:  if phrases are not thought of as static recordings of audio, but 
rather as clusters of musical events, then the key to musical 
expressiveness when triggering phrases is the way the user interface 
transforms the events in a phrase. this transformation must be intuitive 
(playable) and fluid for the musician, yet definable in bitwise logic for 
the computer. it is in this limbo that we seek to explore. 

***
i would love:

to collaborate
working under the model of (free software)
grant money would be great
other work (see above) so i can get fed and pay rent
NYC collaborators especially

thanks for your ears-
-yon



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