Audio Foundation is pleased to announce a one-off Auckland show by Canadian composer and digital artist Myriam Bleau, following her performance aaa Festival in Wellington.
Myriam Bleau's performances have travelled around the world, wowing audiences through her incredible performances of audiovisual systems that go beyond the screen, as shown through her sound installations and performance-specific musical interfaces. Her hybrid electronic practice investigates music performance as a codified cultural manifestation and recontextualizes pop culture elements and music history tropes.
For this very special show, Myriam Bleau will be presenting Soft Revolvers, a music performance for four clear acrylic spinning tops which were custom-designed and built by the artist. Each top, 25 cm in diameter, is associated with an “instrument” in an electronic music composition. The tops are equipped with gyroscopes and accelerometers that communicate wirelessly with a computer. The motion data collected (speed, unsteadiness at the end of a spin, acceleration spikes in case of collisions) informs musical algorithms and controls custom sequencers designed in Pure Data. LEDs inside the tops illuminate the body of the objects in a precise counterpoint to the music, creating stunning spinning halos. Familiar objects, in this case spinning tops, engage audience members in a particularly intricate manner, awakening subconscious physical memories of their lived experience with those objects in terms of behavioural expectations, function and symbolic connotations. The public can anticipate the physical rules that will guide the performance and thus actively participate in the tension and release dynamics at play in Soft Revolvers.
