You are here, this is happening

Tags

alienation, performance, performance anxiety, video games, work

It all started to feel so real when the posters arrived.

Just over one week to the performance, and we’re starting to find all sorts of fun details that need tying up. It’s remarkable how much I have personally enjoyed seeing to those details. The pleasure I have taken from the work reveals a simple, somewhat startling truth: that I care deeply about this project.

This puts me, potentially, in a difficult position because the fact is that I have very little idea what will happen at the performance.

All manner of performances operate under the influence of boatloads of variables. Many are simply beyond control, and so are elided from consideration depending on the specifics of the production. Most others tend to be part of “The Plan”, or specifically “The Plan” involves controlling them to the greatest degree possible.

IJC no. 1 (for 12 Video Games) is designed to take some of those variables out of our control. Twelve video games / instruments are played, live, by twelve players / performers. Audio from each game is routed into a single audio mixer, and from there to the performance space’s speakers. The score is written for the mixer, and details the volume level of each channel at a given time. (The complexity of the score and the mixer has led us to assign two people to this task, roles that John and I will fill (though certainly someone mentally quicker and more physically dexterous than us might play the mixer solo).)

The only instructions to the performers are when to begin and when to end. What they do in their individual games, and so what audio is being sent to the mixer, is entirely up to them. The score only dictates which channel’s audio is passed to the speakers, and at what level, at a given time. Further, we allowed the performers to exercise broad discretion in their choice of game / instrument. Similarly, the score does not dictate channel assignment, so theoretically the same performers with the same instruments could produce two vastly different performances by simply altering the audio routing.

Keep in mind that in this conceptualization, there is no visual component. We will hear what the performers are doing according to the provisions of the score; but we will not see. Sight will be reserved for the performers alone, which is another way to say that it is withheld from everyone else.

So, yes, a lot of unknowns to go along with the unknowables. A lot of uncertainty, which a part of me finds deeply disturbing. Something akin to a fear reaction. It’s scary, I think, doing this and inviting people and going to no small amount of trouble with the planning, the composing, the hardware setup, etc. & etc., when the fact is that I can’t tell you what it will sound like because I do not know. And that’s a good thing, because it means I’m going somewhere I haven’t been before.

And at least I’m not addicted to brain crack.

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Soundscapes

Tags

alienation, community, performance anxiety, soundscapes

Last Wednesday, we did our first rehearsal with live gamers (the think.play folks). It went ok – the 2nd movement was too slow, painfully so. But we got the tempo right for the 3rd movement and it felt much better. I was pretty uncomfortable working with other people as I’m often unsure about what we’re doing. Of course, the players are probably as focused on their games as on the sounds, but I found myself thinking over and over again “are they bored?” “do they think this is stupid?” The draggy pace of the 2nd movement exacerbated these fears, but they were oppressively forefront in my mind during the last 5 measures when everything is silent. This is a marked change from earlier practice sessions when performing was meditative and I felt energized with clarity.

After the playthrough, Dave engaged the gamers about the rehearsal, what they thought, what they heard. Some of it was useful on a planning level – one gamer never heard his game and we talked about working out issues of sound levels in more detail (we’ll need a longer sound check). But they also talked about the sounds of the games and how those sounds trigger recognition. They chatted animatedly about hearing snippets of a particular game, snippets that honestly mean nothing to me as I haven’t played games much at all. However, these sounds are a regular part of their life-world, instantly meaningful. For the outsider, these sounds are possibly of interest as collage or because of their strangeness; for the insider, the gamer, these sounds are something else entirely, a language of connection or belonging. That recognition is one (unplanned) aspect of the piece as a whole: gamers communicating to other gamers using the soundscape of videogames. This is significant because the piece was written such that the gamers & their games are one unit, simply instruments, players alienated from the audience by their immersion in their games. But these instruments still have agency, picking the games they want to play and having the sounds of those games trigger a moment of shared experience with the audience and with each other, a recognition of connection and community through (and within) the soundscapes of these games.