}
by no collective
performed by
4 performers
(yuko asaoka, midori kubota,
you nakai & hikaru toho
at the premier)
several guest performers
1 dog/speaker
1 pigeon/microphone
i
Three different flyers (300 copies each, and all numbered) are distributed around Tokyo. Each kind of flyer addresses an event of different name and concept (though happening at the same time and place). Most of them are placed clandestinely inside magazines and freezines (considered adequate to each flyer design and concept) in bookstores and record stores.
ii
There is a call for free tickets on the flyer. In order to obtain this ticket, the audience is to visit an ice cream shop and receive an envelope with a card inside, on which a name of a used bookstore and a book is instructed (they differ for each envelope/card). The person is to visit the used bookstore, and sneak out the free ticket placed inside the specified book. Each ticket has a different task instruction for the audience to enact during the performance time. The condition for entering free is to present the ticket at the entrance and to enact the task. The instruction is never to be shown nor talked about to other audiences.
iii
Upon arriving to the performance venue, the audiences, already categorized according to the kind of flyer they have, are asked which event they came to see, and are demanded to speakout the name of the corresponding event (which is all entitled in different languages). The person is then told to line up in one of the three different locations outside the venue according to the group he/she belongs to. The four performers along with any number of guest performers with free tickets also line up in one of the three locations (there is at least one performer per line). Each group enters the venue at different time (at 2 minute intervals).
movement 1 (18 mins)
Lighting is at medium level. Each of the four performers sits in one of the four stations dispersed within the venue (each with a piano, guitar, bass or miscellaneous sound making tools/electronics). Performers put headphones on. The pretext, a track made from remixing preexisting music, is played from the headphone. The performance (production of sound heard by the audience) occurs in reaction to this pretext. A different score written in graphic notation is provided for each performer, instructing: 1. The parametric constraints regulating the conditions for each reaction, and 2. The time bracket assigning the length of each parametric constraint. The performer is never to look at the audience nor any other performer. A mobile speaker is attached to the dog, and contact microphone to the pigeon. While the dog is free to run around the venue, the pigeon is kept inside the bird cage. Their approximation creates feedback. All sounds are recorded.
premiered at
shibuya koen-dori classics, tokyo
august 14, 2008
preamble:
written by
you nakai
movement 2 (18 mins)
At the beggining of this movement, one performer yells at the venue staff to turn the lights to its maximum brightness. Performers continue to have headphones on, but the pretext changes to the recorded track of movement 1. The performance (production of sound heard by the audience) occurs in reaction to the pretext. A score for each performer, different from that of movement 1, instructs: 1. The parametric constraints regulating the conditions for each reaction, and 2. The time bracket assigning the length of each parametric constraint. All time brackets are assigned as cues from visual information in the venue (audience, animals, other performers, guest performance, etc), and the performer thus is required to constantly look around for his cues. If the cue refers to the audience, each performer should only take into account those people pertaining to the group he lined up with before entering the venue. Performers switch stations following the cues instructed in the score. In some brackets, actions other than usual performance of music is instructed (going to the bar and getting a drink, smoking, talking with an audience, etc). These actions are also to follow the pretext and the score. The pigeon is set free. The task of one performer then becomes to recatch the bird within the temporal limits of the movement (while also following the score/pretext structure and performing music). Feedback is to occur between the contact microphone attached to the pigeon and the mobile speaker attached to the dog. All sounds are recorded.
movement 3 (18 mins)
Performers take their headphones off. One performer leaves the venue with the pigeon in the birdcage. Upon leaving, she turns off all the lights of the venue. The task for this performer is to take the pigeon to a nearby park and release the bird, after which she calls the venue with her cell phone. The sound from the performer’s cell phone (catching the outside street noise) is amplified inside the venue. This performer stays outside and strolls around the streets, returning to the venue only at the end of this movement. Out of the three performers left at the venue, one performer controls the mixer, combining the recorded sound of movement 1 and 2, along with the real time sound of the outside streets coming in via his/her cell phone. The mixed sound is played throughout the various speakers in the venue. The performer switches the combination of the output speakers according to a given time bracket and rule. The remaining two performers put on contact microphones to their body so that feedback is produced according to his/her distance towards the activated speaker. The task for these two performers is: 1. Get away from the feed back area (which changes according to the switching of speaker combination), and 2. Following a given time bracket (which is based on the performer’s act of counting), and using whatever means in wherever place one is at that given moment, make the loudest sound in the venue at every bracket change. The bracket intervals decrease gradually. After a certain point, the sound producing means becomes limited to clapping, so that both performers near to the end of the movement are clapping almost continuously. The performer outside returns to the venue. A large feedback is produced between her cell phone and the venue speakers at the moment of entering the space. She turns on the lights. One performer goes to the piano and plays a cadenza, to which the rest of the performers bow and audiences take over the clapping.
thesis
(abstract):
Tokyo, 10 June - 14 August 2008
(recording, mov. 1 / pretext, mov.2)
c