Filament Reviews (variety pack)

For my main review I decided to both participate in AND observe Abacus: Early Morning Opera directed by Lars Jan which was held in the Concert Hall. First of all, this is the first time I have been in the Concert hall and let me tell you it is amazing. Sound quality is perfect, lighting and seating are fantastic, and this was just an overall fun and relaxing experience. So the main concept was to manipulate sound, imagery, and lighting using two iPads attached to a giant panda's (Dr. Hieronyous Yang) hands while a pre-recorded audio narrative is played. It pretty much takes you on a journey through the idea of and the future of the "screen age" and the materialistic time that we are living in. According to the narrative, this is the contrast the age of media filling the void where architecture and static art once stood. The conclusion drawn was that the next step is reconstructing geography, which is where the interactive part came in. When touching the iPad with your fingers (in addition to fancy lights that follow your fingers) you would manipulate the continents that were shown on thehumongous screens. After this, it switches to more of a light manipulation where the user changes the colors and strobing of the lights on the stage. Finally, the narrative resolves to the point of reconstructing the entire planet, where the display shows an earth and moon from space. This can in turn be manipulated to be zoomed in on and rotated at will. There were red blocks on different points of land on the planet which when you got closer, they would play different sound clips at varying intensities based on distance. It was like a voyeuristic view into the soundscape of that land.

This, however, was nearly impossible for me to control. For a first time user of the system it was more about just making things happen. It wasn't until my time as an observer that I actually learned ANYTHING about the piece's message. I didn't actually realize what the red blocks were for until 2 times watching someone else use it! It was actually a pretty neat epiphany once it all clicked. I felt really bad for the poor person in the panda suit, I could feel their arms shaking from holding up these iPads for so long, haha.

Overall this was a neat experience that I enjoyed. I was a little hesitant to go one on one with a person while people were watching me, though the panda suit helped ease any anxiety because you didn't have to see the person behind it.

The other exhibits that I saw were in the Process Boxes. These were basically just glass boxes with pieces of different productions, or the exhibit itself in whole.

Daniel Teige: what this consisted of was 2 Cassette Players with cassettes labelled with titles such as "Piano", "MetalBow", and "Machinery". These were field recordings and sound art clips that were obviously high quality. They were probably used as background for some installation or other piece. I found that mixing two tapes at once was really fun and actually worked out really well when I put together "Space" and "Machinery". I felt like I was on a space ship (not to mention that i was inside of EMPAC which is in itself so modern and alien to me).

Michael Schumacher & Bruce Andrews: Trouble, Force Fed Gibberish, Did IDisappoint You?

I'm not sure if this is the title or not (And you will understand why soon), though it seemed fitting. This piece is a computer in a glass box, the keyboard covered so only the screen is visible; on it is a white background with a grid of dots. At seemingly random intervals the screen will pop up a bunch of words, phrases, or quotes... which were HILARIOUS. So random you wouldn't believe. For Example:

- Granulate Their Species

- Hyphen Labor

- How Many Giggle Sticks?

- OK, Chinchilla!

- Duck Taped to the Equator

and of course, the ones that really caught my attention (and which were displayed in a cluster that seemed too planned to be quite as random as the rest)

- TROUBLE

- Force Fed Gibberish

- Did I Disappoint You?

It was so much fun to stand there and just read these really random phrases. They made me laugh a bunch and it reminded me of some of the random things that I have thought of in my dreams (can you say surrealism?). Overall I loved it regardless of how simple it seemed. Oh, and to answer the question: No I was NOT disappointed, haha.