Periodic Table of the Elephants

[imomus]

Saturday night's installation performance at the Vienna Technical University was more of a performance performance than either Tomoko Miyata or I expected it to be. For two hours and forty minutes we sat in a glass box making music which sounded like a cross between Stockhausen's Stimmung and a watery gender wayang. We expected people to wander through the space and check out our ambient sounds -- me vocalising around the Periodic Table of the Elements, Tomoko chiming her water-filled Chinese bowls -- for just a few seconds or minutes. Instead, a small audience sat rapt for hours. What was designed to be boring was in fact exciting, and what was designed to skirt the peripheries of the audience's attention managed to dominate it. So much for "ambient".

It helped that we were visually quite striking -- there was a kind of spiritual gravity to our yin-yang forms, me hidden in a white robe which served as a screen for the watery reflections glittering off the bowls, Tomoko intensely focused on her spoon-mallets, and dressed in black.

My live shows are usually file playback plus singing -- a sort of karaoke leavened by play-acting and Scottish Country Dancing. This time, though, in the privacy of my big cream hood, I was composing in real time, listening to Tomoko and making up folksongs about the elements, or building up big vocal loops with a mic attached to a sampling delay pedal. In the quieter moments I did some talking stuff, telling a story abstracted by the fact that all the characters were metals, or playing on the title of the table:

The Periodic Table of the Elements
The Periodic Table of the Elephants
The periodic embellishments, by elephants, of the Periodic Table of the Elements
The epic and episodic embellishments by smelly elephants who rudely intrude into the Periodic Table of the Elements
und so weiter

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

"We expected people to wander through the space and check out our ambient sounds" - never expect such a thing from austrians. i'd say we tend to be a pretty passive kind of audience, or attendees.

anyway, i joined the performance for about an hour and really enjoyed it. the sounds together with the waterplay on the wall created a very soothing atmosphere.

-therese

[(Anonymous)]

[crowjake.livejournal.com]

It sounds amazing, I wish I were there!

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

LOL you're so delightfully weird, I love it!

[(Anonymous)]

Listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/user/IcySpicyLeoncie

Mendeleevian!

[thomascott.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you enjoyed the performance as much as your audience.

[el-moofo.livejournal.com]

I wish I lived in Northern Climes and could've seen your performance.

On an entirely different note, have you seen this Scotland? (http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/181-scotland-land-of-heroes-and-of-cakes/) I thought of you.

[randomaus.livejournal.com]

Thank you both for a magically mysterious experience. It was great fun to experience the whole scene or just listen, eyes closed, and 'watch' what random, abstract imagery my brain came up with as a result of this unusual input :)

Took some pictures. Most were horrifically noisy, but this at least gives a reasonable impression:
(Oh, and sorry about any flashes, I wasn't using my regular camera and this one kept switching 'auto flash' on.)

http://flickr.com/photos/snewdale/2530708144/in/set-72157601311183421/


*leaves a small figure of an elephant on the table*

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks for uploading those, Stewart, I was hoping there'd be some images of the show on Flickr!

[randomaus.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! Upped two more, but that's it from me, the rest are either blurry or too dark.

I did see two guys with serious-looking DSLRs and a girl making sketches even! Would be nice if they'd show their work here :)