• About
  • Cats Dig Hemingway
  • Guest Bookings
  • John King’s Publications
  • Literary Memes
  • Podcast Episode Guide
  • Store!
  • The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Videos
  • Writing Craft Discussions

The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Tag Archives: Synthestruct

Aesthetic Drift #11: Notes on The Pink Fire Revue

07 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Aesthetic Drift

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Dudag, Jared Silvia, John King, Nicole Oquendo, Synthestruct, The Pink Fire Revue, Tod Caviness

Aesthetic Drift #11 by Jared Silvia

Notes on The Pink Fire Revue

We knew, first off, that we wanted the event to be part concert, part reading, part projector art show. Whenever you start with the idea of creating a mutant, you have a relatively good chance of succeeding. Whether its destiny is to dwell in the sewer or not is another question.

Pink Fire Revue Gear

Photo by Jared Silvia.

John mentioned the idea of music/poetry coming together with an eye toward, I think, some of the modular synthesizer music I had been posting on various social streams. I had been bouncing a similar idea around in my brain, imagining it would be impossible to accomplish, or hoping that I would get better at what I do with synthesizers first, allowing my insecurity to shove the idea into the realm of “possible, but not likely,” that zone in my brain where I imagine something happening without reasonably expecting it to manifest. Sometimes it just takes the realization that you’re not riding a waveform alone to draw an idea out of hibernation.

John King_2

Photograph by Shawn McKee.

Here’s what we did, for all the planning and one false start:

First, we knew it would be a literary event. That’s what our events, collectively, are. We knew it should be poetry with a technological bent, something that thought about ghosts in machines, silicon strands, electrical arcs, retro-futures, and technological mainstreams of now. We reached out to a collection of poets who would, we thought, approach this matter with an open mind, and who had performance experience, which would be necessary for a show that inherently required interactivity. This included John, of course, and also Nicole Oquendo, Tod Caviness, and Mary McGinn.

Nicole Oquendo

Photo by Shawn McKee.

Meanwhile, at the school I teach at in an audio program, there are a number of teachers who dabble (to various degrees) in modular synthesizer building. I’m at the lowest extreme of that world, taking very small steps into the modular synthesizer world after loving and playing synthesizers since I was a teenager. Jon Curtis and Derek Duda, who both build their own modules, and are resourceful, enjoy making music, but hadn’t recently performed with their systems. When I asked if they were interested, they were immediately down. We spent a few weeks gathering in a classroom and improvising together in order to see what it sounded like when all three of us went forward into the world of self-playing patches and barely controlled chaos.

Derek Duda

Derek Duda, photograph by Lesley Silvia.

This part takes some explanation. I know many folks won’t be completely aware of what modular synthesizers are. Generally, they are like other synthesizers you may have seen or heard (zap, boom boom boom), but they present their components individually, and require that you determine how they are connected in order to create sounds. This requires a base-level of knowledge, but allows for an incredible amount of flexibility and variation from a simple collection of components. Sound sources (oscillators), modifiers (filters, etc.), and math/control functions (sequencers, envelopes), plus other cool modules (samplers, in this case) come together in many various ways to generate different sounds. We started with fresh patches each time. Each of our systems was chasing a common “clock,” which means that any elements we wanted synchronized together between our systems could be locked together with a common guiding timing signal that consists of electrical pulses. In the video of the event, you’ll notice us tweaking settings, pulling patch cables, modifying the sound. That’s how it goes every time.

Ginger Leigh

Ginger Leigh, photograph by Lesley Silvia.

It also takes a little of explanation to understand the video aspect of the event. Ginger Leigh, who I have known for a really long time, is a very highly regarded visual artist who operates under the name Synthestruct. She has presented her work in the US, in Germany, Sweden, and elsewhere, and has recently curated projector art shows here in the Orlando area. I originally asked her if she would be interested in participating in this show, naively imagining that she would create series of live visuals she could trigger in much the way a VJ might.

What she did, instead, though, was to create an entire program that received sound inputs from our modular synthesizers, and from the microphone at the event, and would vibrate and modify visual protocols she had designed. In essence, she wrote a sound-reactive program just for the event, and while she tweaked parameters live, the show was utterly one-time in that the sounds came from a set of variable un-repeatable instrument settings running chaotic patterns, modifying visuals that were designed to react to these patterns.

Jared Silva

Photo by Shawn McKee.

Ultimately, this event was wonderfully synchronized. The work of the poets intersected uncannily with the sounds being generated, the improvisation huddled up perfectly well, and the visualizations functioned in ways that went so far beyond what I imagined that it was a little overwhelming to be standing in the wash of light. Not bad considering that the actual event was the first time we put all of these ideas together to become the mutant it became, not, it turned out, a sewer-dweller.

It strikes me that there are some interesting concerns inherent in an event like this. What do we see when we view ourselves as technology users? The ubiquity of media is such that we so easily slip back into our devices, a closeness of mind and screen that is unprecedented in ages before ours. We are experts at media, consuming it constantly, ravenously. And yet, our consumption is often so solitary, a monologue flowing mainly in one direction from device to person. That this event was a “multimedia presentation” of unintuitive, self-exploring instruments, programs designed for visual translation, and human voices confirming that things are amiss, things are unsettled, does not encapsulate the full experience. Because The Pink Fire Revue was a communal happening, shared not only between members of the audience, but between the performers, the audience, the instruments, the software, the voices, and the building itself, complete with feedback at every hinge, it suggested another coming age of technological witness. In retrospect, it was (without any of us realizing it, and that includes those of us who came up with the idea) an experiment in basic singularity, with all of the complex nodes it takes to form a new, multi-mind nervous system.

This event would not have been possible without John King, who conceptualized it with me, Ryan Rivas, who is an amazing event producer, and who always makes Functionally Literate stuff possible, Shawn McKee, who shot the video of the event alongside John King, and edited the video as well, Pat Greene, who was generous in providing the space at The Gallery at Avalon Island, and Lesley Silvia, who always helps in a million tangible and intangible ways as things kick off on an idea like this.

_______

Jared SylviaJared Silvia (Episodes 57, 62, 69, 90, 122, 129, 131, 152,  167,  171,  173,  206, and 213) is the host of the Functionally Literate reading series and radio show. His fiction has appeared in decomP, Monkeybicycle, Annalemma Magazine, Digital Americana magazine, and in collections from Burrow Press. He was the recipient of a Luso American scholarship from the DISQUIET International Literary Conference in 2013. You can find out more at jaredsilvia.com.

 

Save

Scribophile, the online writing group for serious writers

Online, shop here:

If you must, shop Amazon and help the show.

Audible.com

Blogs

Not forgotten

Categories

  • 21st Century Bronte
  • A Word from the King
  • Aesthetic Drift
  • animation
  • Anime
  • Art
  • Autobiography
  • AWP
  • Biography
  • Blog Post
  • Bloomsday
  • Buddhism
  • Buzzed Books
  • Cheryl Strayed
  • Children's Literature
  • Christmas
  • Christmas literature
  • Comedy
  • Comic Books
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart
  • Craft of Fiction Writing
  • Creative Nonfiction
  • David Foster Wallace
  • David James Poissant
  • David Lynch
  • David Sedaris
  • Disney
  • Dispatches from the Funkstown Clarion
  • Doctor Who
  • Drinking
  • Dungeons and Dragons
  • Editing
  • Education
  • Episode
  • Erotic Literature
  • Essay
  • Fan Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Feminism
  • Film
  • Film Commentary
  • Flash Fiction
  • Florida Literature
  • Francesca Lia Block
  • Functionally Literate
  • Ghost writing
  • Graphic Novels
  • Gutter Space
  • Help me!
  • Heroes Never Rust
  • History
  • Horror
  • Humor
  • Hunter S. Thompson
  • In Boozo Veritas
  • Irish Literature
  • Jack Kerouac
  • James Bond
  • James Joyce
  • Jazz
  • Journalism
  • Kerouac House
  • Kung Fu
  • Like a Geek God
  • Literary Criticism
  • Literary Magazines
  • Literary Prizes
  • Literary rizes
  • Literature of Florida
  • Litlando
  • Live Show
  • Loading the Canon
  • Loose Lips Reading Series
  • Lost Chords & Serenades Divine
  • Magic Realism
  • Mailbag
  • manga
  • McMillan's Codex
  • Memoir
  • Miami Book Fair
  • Michael Caine
  • Military Literature
  • Mixtape
  • Music
  • New York City
  • O, Miami
  • Old Poem Revue
  • On Top of It
  • Pensive Prowler
  • Philosophy
  • Photography
  • Poetry
  • politics
  • Postmodernism
  • Publishing
  • Recommendation
  • Repeal Day
  • science
  • Science Fiction
  • Screenwriting
  • Sexuality
  • Shakespeare
  • Shakespearing
  • Sozzled Scribbler
  • Sports
  • Star Wars
  • Television
  • The Bible
  • The Curator of Schlock
  • The Global Barfly's Companion
  • The Lists
  • The Perfect Life
  • The Pink Fire Revue
  • The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Theater
  • There Will Be Words
  • translation
  • Travel Writing
  • Vanessa Blakeslee
  • Versify
  • Video Games
  • Violence
  • Virginia Woolf
  • War
  • Westerns
  • Word From the King
  • Young Adult
  • Your Next Beach Read
  • Zombies

Recent Posts

  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #182: Walk in Silence
  • The Perfect Life #44
  • Episode 530: Jamie Hecker!
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #181: Energized and Anthologized Vol. 4
  • Episode 529: Kathryn Harlan!

Archives

  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • The Drunken Odyssey
    • Join 4,213 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Drunken Odyssey
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...