Lights
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posted 2008-12-04 by David Kjelkerud

Performing Lights

We were invited by VJ / graphics-master Mikael Wehner to do a performance at Interactive Institute's 10 year anniversary. We came up with an idea, which is a merge between two of our earlier projects, Strings and Out of the Box. The concept is simple: Four electric light bulbs, each starting a soundloop when they are turned on. Each light bulb flash in sync with the loop it's playing, creating flickering shadows of the audience on the walls around. Here is a video of yesterday's performance of Lights, Patrik doing the thing:


Lights performance (alternative angle) from Physical Interaction Lab on Vimeo.

One of the things we discuss alot at the lab is how to make live performance of electronic music more engaging to the audience. We think that we have seen enough artists hiding behind laptops during their whole set. There is really something lost when you don't see what the performer does and how that corresponds to the music. Lights is a small step towards an performance that bypass the traditional stage, use the space more freely to let the audience stand around the performer. The connection between action and music output is made more obvious, a connection that is often lost when a performer only turns a knob on a keyboard or clicks a control on his screen.

One design decision that we discussed was if we should use other loops in addition to the four controlled by the lamps to build up the song even further. This felt "unpure" at first but we eventually found this compromise better, as the other five loops made the song way more dynamic and complete (you can see it in the video when Patrik is moving back and forth to the laptop). In hindsight I think this kind of compromise is a good thing that I'd actually like to see more of. Most artists are still using laptop and MIDI keyboards, most probably because other options are too complicated/expensive to use. I don't think you need to leave the old setup behind altogether to make an engaging performance. Incorporating just a small element of interaction that makes the audience understand the connection between action and music can create an more engaging act. We are currently working on another project in this area aswell, more info on that will be posted on the blog in the coming months.

Lights is written in c++ using openFrameworks. Input is handled by an Arduino and lamp output by DMX with the help of Erik Sjödins cppGlue. The song we use is called "Shadows and Light" and is made inhouse by our own music master Patrik. For more information, code etc check out Lights under projects.

Update: Added two more movies of the performance filmed by Mikael Wehner. Embedded one of them above instead of the first one. All three can be found on Vimeo: Lights performance, Lights performance (alternative angle), Lights performance (break).

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