Drawing Sound
live audio and visual performance with Fred Frith
photo credit: Myles Boisen
Drawing Sound at Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, Denmark, with Lotte Anker, Fred Frith & Mike Sheridan
Fred Frith and I improvise together in a variety of contexts. In Drawing Sound, Fred explores the essential parameters and limits of the musical “instrument”. I have been developing and refining tools that allow me to digitally paint and draw over projected videos, both pre-recorded and from live feeds. More recently we have developed an ‘analog’ version of this project, in which I draw directly on window panes.
In this work, we are confronting the difficulties specific to improvising in both visual and audio fields in a world where the visual is generally perceived as primary. How to avoid the music being taken as a soundtrack? Should the listeners/viewers be able to understand it from the same point of view as the creators? What is the equivalent of silence in images? How does a visual “gesture” correspond to a sonic one, or indeed should it? In the end, what kinds of interaction are possible or desirable? These are some of the issues that are addressed in Drawing Sound.
In this work, we are confronting the difficulties specific to improvising in both visual and audio fields in a world where the visual is generally perceived as primary. How to avoid the music being taken as a soundtrack? Should the listeners/viewers be able to understand it from the same point of view as the creators? What is the equivalent of silence in images? How does a visual “gesture” correspond to a sonic one, or indeed should it? In the end, what kinds of interaction are possible or desirable? These are some of the issues that are addressed in Drawing Sound.
Valdivia Chile; April 9th, 2015
FLUX (Lotte Anker, Fred Frith, Magda Mayas, Heike Liss)
Koncertkirken, Copenhagen, July 13, 2018