Leif Norman photographer
full time arts and culture photographer in Winnipeg Manitoba Canada
Cluster Festival, April 2 2015
PLAY
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Doors 7:30pm, Show: 8:00pm, PLAYTIME: 9:30pm
Part concert, part electronic playground: PLAY allows you to hear artists working with unique electronic instruments and then try them out yourself in a friendly, casual atmosphere.
Concert: Solo electronic set by Winnipeg whiz Kerey Harper // Sweden’s Fredrik Gran mixes the Reactable with Montreal’s Architek Percussion // Myriam Bleau spins her beautiful hand-made turn-table-tops in Soft Revolvers // foci + loci uses video game map editors as virtual stages to create playable immersive soundscapes. They will perform the premiere of ‘Another Kind of Spiral’ by Tamara Yadao which is made possible by a commissioning grant from the Jerome Fund for New Music through the American Composer’s Forum // Ghostly, a short video by Montreal’s Maxime Corbeil-Perron
Playtime: Take your turn at the Reactable (made famous by Björk on her Volta tour), give Myriam Bleau’s Soft Revolvers a spin, jam with foci + loci (or just play video games for a while in the Impossible Architectures exhibit next door), and explore Maxime Corbeil-Perron’s video Ghostly in a new interactive version: House.
“A child of rock and electronic music, Maxime Corbeil-Perron draws inspiration from the instrumental tradition and nature to create a personal, abstract, and lively soundworld. A student at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montreal, Maxime Corbeil-Perron is currently working on obtaining his master’s degree in electroacoustic composition. The Montreal-based composer divides his time between the new music scene, video art and the local underground scene.” from https://soundcloud.com/maxcorbeilperron
“Barb Flemington is excited by the animation of marginal or overlooked spaces. Most recently she completed a site-specific project at Brandon University Library, and will have a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in the spring of 2014. She was a founding member of the Coterie of Malcontents and lives rurally in Western Manitoba.
Barb works with found objects, archives and histories of place. While at MAWA, she will be working on translating her process into the public realm. She will be installing on MAWA’s WAM! Wall.” from mawa.ca
“When Kerey Harper came to Winnipeg from the remote northern community of St. Theresa Point and started school at River East Collegiate in 2012 at the age of 15, he’d been quietly making music for three years.
“I was using a free recording interface,” Harper explained. “I was recording guitar riffs from there. I had a rhythmic thing that I would make drum patterns with. But I never really showed anybody that stuff.”
When River East’s band director Jeff Kula found the quiet, young student poking around the band room one day, Harper’s musical journey took an interesting twist.
“He just wandered into the room and started exploring sounds,” Kula said. “He hadn’t seen a lot of these instruments before. He said, ‘Can I borrow some stuff?’ He wanted to use those sounds on his recordings.” ” from http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/our-communities/herald/Harper-an-exceptional-talent-teacher–298140681.html
“Fredrik Gran is an award-winning composer originally from the Vällingby suburb in Stockholm, Sweden. His music and research intersects electroacoustic and acoustic sound ideas, employing mechanic/robotic interactive units, amplified instruments and objects, computer-assisted transcription of his own electroacoustic music and purpose-made electronic models into the notated sphere of acoustic instruments. Fredrik’s work covers orchestral, chamber, vocal, electroacoustic and live electronic music, as well as music for installations, museums, dance, digital- and visual art.”
“Soft Revolvers is a music performance for 4 spinning tops built with clear acrylic by the artist. Each spinning top, 10’ in diameter, is associated with an ‘instrument’ or part in an electronic music composition. The tops are equipped with gyroscopes and accelerometers that communicate wirelessly with a computer where the motion data collected (speed, unsteadiness at the end of a spin, acceleration spikes in case of collisions) informs musical algorithms designed in Pure Data. LEDs placed inside the tops illuminate the body of the objects in a precise counterpoint to the music. The positioning of the lights creates visually stunning halos around the tops, enhanced by POV effects (persistence of vision). A camera placed above the performance table provides video feed that will be subtly manipulated and projected back on the screen behind the artist, making the projections an integral part of the performance.”
http://www.reactable.com/products/live/
“The Reactable Live! allows musicians and their audience to experience music in a whole new way.
Designed to provide direct and intuitive interaction with sound through objects on a multi-touch enabled screen, it is perfect to play live and to unveil your creativity.
With the Reactable Live! Limited Series, we continue to push the borders of a visually appealing and intuitive control of your performance. This makes the Reactable Live! the perfect instrument to boost your connection with your audience and to redefine the way you communicate your music.”
