Two of my interactive pieces, Toucher 4 1 and Take a walk, were performed by emerging percussionist, Hai-Ting Liao, at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP) on 20/05/2011.
Take a walk by Chi-Hsia Lai
Take a walk is an interactive and improvisational work designed for one soloist to create music in real-time. The concept is to create an interactive music-making space that allows the soloist on stage to have full control in organising sound through the action of walking. The soloist moves freely to trigger musical events, to make live recording, and to playback the recorded sound, depending on the position of the body. Although this interactive system was created with a musical idea, it is not a typical music composition as there is no music score for the performer. The performer takes the responsibility in determining the musical storyline and how to “take a walk”. The soloist has much freedom in interpretation, however it is suggested to put the following three aspects into consideration:
1. Instrument (musical, non-musical)
2. Voice (speech, non-speech)
3. The ‘walk’ (direction, length, speed, movement)
Toucher 4 1 by Chi-Hsia Lai
Toucher 4 1 is a percussion and media performance work for one percussionist. The percussionist improvises freely with pre-composed sound-image interaction. This piece explores interactivity with a unique approach in integrating media technology with contemporary percussion performance. Based on the concept of my previous work, Hands On Stage (2008), a custom-built table for real-time sound and image performance. Toucher 4 1 utilises a similar technical implementation with different performance interface – a snare drum. This new setup enables further exploration in different timbres, performance techniques, as well as interactivities between the inter-relationship of the performer’s hand movements, acoustic sound, processed sound, and projected visuals, which are converged to form a new performance space. The piece is carried out in five phases, and the performer makes her/his own decision on when to move to the next phase. This is an improvisational piece without music score, but with pre-composed interaction.
