Conceptual Overview:
For the Denver Botanical Garden's event Digital Nature 2008, Corey Scott and Dafe Hughes have developed a multimovement, mixed media performance entitled "Flowers for Algedon." "Flowers" will invite the audience to explore the perennial cycle of life, death and rebirth, the organic process of algedonic evolution, and synesthesist experience.
The digital world has barely begun to understand the fundamental principals governing organic life. Lindenmayer systems may describe growth from seeds to weeds, Conway's Game of Life can virtualize the struggle of microorganisms in a petri dish. Entropy and synchrony are locked in perpetual struggle and life results.
Algedonic systems are relationships that connect all living things to their environment. From lilies to lightning bugs, hibiscus to humans, every being 'senses' the world around it and develops as their environment conditions them. We as beings avoid pain and seek pleasure from our surroundings. This ability to sense and feel is algedonia.
Flowers for Algedon will attempt to grant this 'sensing and feeling' to a computer network. The algedonic will experience music and dance with the audience, and contribute it's own musical ideas based solely on the visual aspects of the performance, and enhance the dancers performance based on musical ideas it hears. The network will be encouraged to live and grow as the dancers, musicians, and audience do.
The Performance:
The duration of the performance will be 25-30 minutes in length. 'Flowers' is conceived for the stage, and is performed by two dancers, two musicians and a video projection feed being generated by a computer network gifted with virtual eyes, ears and methods of response. The computer network will watch the dancers through a digital camera and listen to the music via digital microphones, and will use what it sees and hears to create and manipulate virtual environments with which the dancers will interact.
The music is presented in four movements, each corresponding to a season and its respective phase in the cycle of growth and regeneration. It will primarily be generated through computer synthesis, but the musicians will also use a bass guitar and a live vocal sampling to create sound for the computer system to process. While the music is meticulously planned and the computer environment being used to produce it is intensely programmed, the nature of the music itself will be largely improvisational, allowing the performers to react to each other, the dancers, the audience, and the video elements of the piece.
The video will conceptually elaborate on the theme of each movement, showing raindrops, blooming flowers, fireflies, water, etc., but it will not be animated ahead of time. Every element of the video will be able to react to sound and light information through a variety of planned parameters. Physical location of objects on the screen may at times be dictated by the motion of the dancers and lights the dancers control. Color palettes change in response to musical changes in pitch or timbre, the speed and motion of objects may be calculated and reinterpreted in relation to the space between the dancers. Intensity of motion may react to the tempo or actual beats heard in the music. The aspects that the computers are controlling will change and evolve throughout the piece, as will the selection of stimuli causing the network to react on screen.
Spatial Arrangements
The computers and musical equipment will fit on a large folding table or two folding stands, all of which will be brought by the performers. The remaining stage space will be reserved for use of the dancers, unless it is deemed more advantageous to place the dancers between the stage and the audience. The piece will make use of the sound system and projector provided in the auditorium.
The Musicians
Corey Scott has composed, recorded and performed music of many styles for over two decades. He plays piano and keyboards, guitar and bass guitar, saxophone, and has composed written music for short and feature-length film, several bands, and has released dance music under several names. Of the pseudonyms he's used, digitalb0y is the one under which the body of his music most similar to "Flowers For Algedon" has been made, though "Flowers" is considerably more minimal and thematic in nature. Examples of digitalb0y recordings can be found at:
http://spacepiratemusic.com/digitalb0y/index.htm
Dafe Hughes has worked in countless aspects of media and performance, from the writing and co-direction of short films to stage performance with several live bands. In addition to helping with the composition behind "Flowers," he's also the one who wrote the computer programs and algorithms behind the video portion of the piece. In teaming with Corey he has found musical format and performance means with which to fit the ideas behind his artistic creations and the computer's virtually conscious control of them.