Photograph by Jo L Walton
Syndicate is an ongoing programme of experimental performance at Inspace, curated by Lila Matsumoto, Jo L Walton and Samantha Walton. For Syndicate 6, I was invited to collaborate with poet Christina Chalmers on a reading of her poem Hell, Realism.
I performed live manipulation of Christina's reading using a custom programme that would interpret live drawing input from a graphics tablet as parameters for a granular synthesis system. On drawing a single shape, the programme would remember and repeat multiple random instances of that shape, accompanied by a single sound grain.
The resulting sound was of multiple overlaid fragments of Christina's voice in real time, randomly pitched, echoing over and interweaving with her speaking. The evolving image was projected behind us for the duration of the reading.
Photograph by Jo L Walton
The final image state at the end of the performance (detail)