A Short Overview of PerformancePractices at Live!iXem 2011& Feedback from the Publicby Granular/N.K.

A Short Overview of Performance Practices at Live!iXem 2011Favignana and Palermo, Sicily/Italy

by Granular

1 Alex Mendizabal, “Camurria, pupi all'aria”On all four sides of one of the courtyards at the Ex-Stabilimento Florio delle Tonnare diFavignana e Formica(http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ex-Stabilimento-Florio-della-tonnara-di-Favignana/142924499061549) Spanish artist Alex Mendizabal set up strings with balloons hanging from them, thatfeatured small plastic pressurized air trumpets. Even though the work was announced asinstallation, the “live” element was at play, as the valves of the trumpets had to be opened tostart blowing. As the artist walked along the walls of the courtyard clockwise, opening one byone, sound would gradually fill the space. People wandered around to experience reflections,shifting tones and intensity from various spots in the courtyard. When all trumpets finallyplayed, the sound was loudest. It would then slowly recede while various audience steppedforward and joyfully squeezed the remaining air out of the deflating balloons. About a dozen ofthem was later stolen.- (IMG_5560,) 201112_opensound_avhc_7825, 7852

( )

2 Xabier Erkizia, “Live quadraphonic concert”

Basque artist Xabier Erkizia presented a number of sound materials recorded with unusualmicrophones or transducers and partly heavily amplified (acoustic zoom). Some of the materialswould provide insight into natural sound (hydrophonic recordings), while others would relate toelectromagnetic radiation.Together with Xavier Balderas and Iñigo Telletxea, Erkizia also presented some of the deviceshe used for gathering his sounds in a workshop on microphone, transducer and hydrophonebuilding.-workshop: 201112_opensound_avhc_7996, 201112_opensound_antitesi_3058-concert: 201112_opensound_avhc_7881

3 Leon McCarthy + Giuseppe Torre, “Live Audio visual performance”[can’t say anything about this one - Marc][I’ll ask giuseppe torre if he can give us few lines about it - Dom --thanks! Marc--]

4 J. A. Garavaglia + C. R. Angel, “Wooden Worlds”“Wooden Worlds” is an audio-visual performance with multimedia interaction in real-time (viola, video,

photography and sound processing).

The attention of the audience is challenged by the piece’s sounds and visual elements, which are not

recognizable at first sight in most of the cases. The viola acts as an element of accretion and mergence

between the elements with musical passages, some of which are composed in detail and some others more

of an improvised nature.

The real-time interaction (sound processing, viola controlling live-electronics and viola controlling real-time

manipulation of the video) is produced by two laptop computers running Max/MSP/Jitter, connected with

each other via Ethernet.

5 Marc Behrens, “Mutattnarcimm”[refer to “Attimmmuttummmittamutattnarcimm, A Compositional and Performative Process”, MarcBehrens]-201112_opensound_avhc_8253

6 Ryan Jordan, “Possession Trance”In an audio-visual setup with multiple stroboscopes, Ryan Jordan connects light sensors in away that the strobe frequencies and their interferences generate loud audio pulses and createa perceptive feedback loop between sight and sound. During the performance Ryan controls thevarious speeds of the strobes. Depending on the spectator’s receptivity, the experience canelicit euphoria.-201112_opensound_avhc_8295, 8330, 201112_opensound_576

7 Benoit Maubrey, “Feedback Fred”Benoit Maubrey had built an battery-operated amplifier with powerful car stereo speakers, adigital sampler and looper module into a leather jacket he wears, which makes him anautonomous performer). He performed twice in Palermo’s Chiesa di Vucciria (InstitutoCervantes), for 14 and 7 minutes, the second time recording a sound bite of himself pointedlyexclaiming “I like Palermo – Palermo likes me”, which he then tweaked beyond recognition,venturing into the narrow street and into a food store.-details jacket: 201112_opensound_avhc_8518, 8520

-performance: 201112_opensound_avhc_8092, (8097, 8104,) 8119, 8817

( )

8 Carlos Zingaro, “Agora/Nada”-201112_opensound_avhc_8617[refer to “Solo or anti-solo, Acoustic versus electroacoustic real time processing or theimportance of acoustically “interactive” spaces” by Carlos Zingaro about his setup and practice]

8 J Milo Taylor | SainSwn a.k.a. The Sound Assassin, Wajid Yaseen, [please doublecheckartist names; title of performance?]The concert was a spontaneous, unrehearsed interaction between three artists. While J MiloTayler and Joel Cahen played back a selection of field recordings, creating a few surprising turnsin dynamics, Wajid Yaseen at first played a frequency generator, then used body movements tochannel himself into a state of heightened awareness. Somewhere in the middle of the piece, hescreamed towards the ceiling of the church, then left his chair to explore the actual space,screaming at various intervals and spots and into different directions around the audience.-201112_opensound_avhc_8702, 8719

9 Julien Poidevin “Found objects-based performance”Using a microphone, Julien Poidevin amplified found objects which were handled, rubbed andbanged, manipulated and excited as percussive instruments. The sounds created by the objectsJulien then attempted to recreate vocally, improvising momentary oral sounds (onomatopées) inan attempt to enter into dialogue or create a tension between the sounds produced by thesonorisation of objects and by his retelling or mimicry of the object. Recording through a mixer,he arranged the mostly percussive sound bites in a Pure Data patch (Slice/Jockey developed byKatja Vetter) that created beat-based structures in real time, which he can still transformfurther with a Kaoss pad (see also Julien Poidevin’s article).-201112_opensound_601

10 “Cracklebox building, a tactile electronic instrument” workshop (Alex Pierotti) andconcert (Live Cracklebox Orchestra: Stefano Zorzanello, Vincenzo Amari, ManuelBuscemi, Gloria Patti, Wajid Yaseen, Giuseppe “Tito” Castelli)Alex Pierotti conducted a workshop how to construct your own Cracklebox (originally inventedby Michael Waisvisz, http://crackle.org/CrackleBox.htm). Alex instructed the workshopparticipants of different experience levels over two half days to build his slightly modifiedversion of the instrument. On the evening of the second day the Crackleboxes were then triedout in concert. To structure the performance, Alex conducted the group, and Carmelo Clementeworked on the mixing desk to dynamically spatialise the sounds. At the end of the performance,the players disconnected their Crackleboxes from the sound system and walked off into thespace, playing through their devices’ miniature speakers. The audience was closely grouped

around the players.-workshop: 201112_opensound_570, 593-concert: 201112_opensound_646, 655

Photographs by Granular, N.K. (Aniana Heras Cosin), Solaris and AntiTesi.

Feedback from the Public

by N.K.

The concerts were all well attended in all of the locations at the Festival. Although some of theconcerts and workshops took place on Favignana, an island that was at a distance from theother activities in Palermo. The outdoor performative concert by Alex Mendizabal, “Camurria,pupi all’aria” due to its interactive nature engaged audiences of the most diverse age groups,which included children and elderly people, in addition to the normal concert audiences whichtend to be made up of people in their twenties and thirties. All of the concert performanceswere of high quality with good technical support and sound equipment, PA systems. Theacoustics of almost all of the spaces in which the concerts were hosted were also quite good.Some of the concert locations due to the architecture of the room and its size were not ideal,namely the performance space in which the Xabier Erkizia, “Live quadraphonic concert” tookplace, due to the sheer size of the room and its reverberant qualities. In Palermo, BenoitMaubrey’s “Feedback Fred” began in a square near the Instituto Cervantes and continuedindoors enticing some unsuspecting passersby to join in on the festival although they did notknow of it beforehand.

Additionally the program included workshops, lectures and seminars on artistic practices andsocial political concerns and agendas in Sound Art.

One of the talks dealing with social political context was presented by Arteleku in which thelisteners were informed about the content of a particular field recording post listening giving anaccount to the listeners of its highly charged political content tied to the geographical location

of the recording. This was one example of developing public sound map archives.The workshop and lecture participants and the public who were interviewed, all spokeenthusiastically about their experiences.

The workshop participants were often an equal mix of both genders, male and female, and haddifferent levels of prior experience in the field of Sound Art. In all cases most participants leftwith a working instrument, or microphones and happy that they had experienced somethingwhich was new to them and had yielded good results.

The disciplines from which the participants came varied from dance, to engineering, to socialstudies and finally some electronic musicians were present as well, but they were not thepredominant participants in these workshops.