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Work Details |
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Pariah (1991) is an extract from a performance by David Dunn and Woody Vasulka
entitled The Theatre of Hybrid Automata that took place as part of Limmagine
Elettronica, Ferrara, Italy, May 3, 1991. The performance was awarded the festivals
first prize. Our interest was in the specification, through software design and hardware
integration, of an automated theatre where an aesthetic/experiential confrontation
between a physical space and its synthetic model could be composed.
The sounds are the result of a MIDI violin/computer controlled laser disk player where
pitch data from the violin is mapped into a control system such that the performer has
specific control of various image and sound parameters: selection of image/sound
disk locations, frame rate for image/sound playback speed, and selection of forward
or backwards disk motion. The images and sounds placed on disk for subsequent
deconstruction were excerpts from a performance by actor Tim Thompson with image
processing by Woody Vasulka. All the vocal sounds are realtime transforms of his
spoken text and accompanying vocalizations. These transformations and the MIDI
programmed percussion samples were emergent properties of the realtime
performance of micro-dramatic events controlled with MIDI violin.The lesson of this
experiment was two fold: 1) the quality of dramatic essence is coded into a very small
segment of the dramatic gesture, and 2) once these elements are realized, the
deconstructive possibilities point to new strategies of narrative patterning.
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