Given my preoccupation with using a computer to generate streams of data which I use to make music, it may seem a little perverse that my current chimera involves removing the laptop from my solo performance rig.
As discussed last week, I think the laptop functions beautifully as a barrier between the performer and their audience, one I’d like to try and remove.
Ideally, my gestures during a performance would all demonstrably alter the sonic outcome; there would not be those awkward moments where the audience perceive you’re doing something but that could be preparing to execute a block of code or it could be emailing the folks back home. It’s a moment where the discourse between the performer and the audience is derailed – the performer is having a private moment with the technology, the audience’s notions of mutual fidelity in the shared experience are shattered.
Or, at best, subsequent to the keyboard bashing, something then happens to the sound which justifies this temporary disconnect between performer and audience. If this event-to-be is suitably gratifying, everyone may feel placated. My concern is that the performer is then establishing an expectation; the next performer/laptop interaction may not result in such elan. Without direct access to the performer’s interface (and the ability to interpret what is happening there), it is impossible for the audience to fully make the connection between what they are seeing and what they are hearing.
Projecting the laptop’s desktop is one way to have everyone ‘feel more involved’ but one which I feel recognises the issue and simultaneously admits defeat, akin to a TV studio manager having to hold up a placard telling the audience when to laugh.
I have some new small things to add to my rig to aid me in this quest for performative laptop abandonment – they may feature here in future weeks..
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