I was at a really interesting performance at Open Space here in Victoria recently.
First of all, Kathy Kennedy led us around the city on a soundwalk. This was a different kind of soundwalk though, because each of us carried a FM radio around tuned to the local campus radio station which was broadcasting some ambient drone music.
Kathy was also broadcasting a signal on a little pirate radio transmitter that she had setup on top of the building. As we walked around the streets, our radios would randomly pick up the two stations, sometimes flicking briefly into other stations. People looked at this crowd of strange people carrying radios and humming with curiosity.
It would be cool to do this as more of a performance piece, perhaps we could spread out through the downtown, meeting up randomly, music interleaving. The radios were interesting because the buildings would distort the signal, but the other stations on the dial did interfere with the experiment. Perhaps we should do it with a less populated frequency on the dial? Perhaps there would be people walking around who would be transmitters, and others who would be receivers?
Could we do this with digital media? Live singers? Try to find where the singers are performing by using your own radio to locate their transmitter, and then as more people find the singers, the louder the amplification would be?
Later that night Christine Duncan gave us a wonderful performance of her 8 octave vocal range, with clicks and barks and whoops, poetry and music combined. Hexaphone, or rather four members of Hexaphone also performed a variety of works.
One of my favorite was a performance of a John Cage piece where two performers would play a game of chance, in this case, Snakes and Ladders, and the game board was mic'd and amplified just below the point of feedback. Very fun and reminded me of John Cage's work with the I Ching.
