Sobralasolas ! - episode 2 (2010) - 52mn (Berlin version)
Live Network Radiopera avec/with Caroline Bouissou (Caroline), Dinahbird (Bird), Björn Eriksson (Miulew), Emmanuelle Gibello (Miss Purple), Jérôme Joy (Jerome), Kaffe Matthews (Mlle Jaune).
Piloté par / Drove by Jérôme Joy & Kaffe Matthews.
Commissioned by DRK DeutscheRadio Kultur KlangKunst Berlin (G) Jan 2010.
CD release EBU Acustica, Dec 2010.
Part 2: Episode 2 system ?
Commissioned by the Deutschlandradio Kultur in Berlin (F) on Jan 2010, the second episode of SOBRALASOLAS! is a live and network event that combines a distribution in space of the players (who are located in remote places around the world) and the audience(s) (who, for instance for this version in Berlin, was able to listen to the performance in the concert room and on air simultaneously). The line-up of this episode 2 gathers : Kaffe Matthews (in London), Björn Eriksson (in Solleftea in Sweden), Dinahbird (in Paris), Caroline Bouissou (in Marseilles), and Jérôme Joy who was in Berlin for this event.
Each player builds his/her playing configuration at home and organizes the interactions between his/her improvisation play and his/her local environment. This interaction is possible by using microphones for capturing voices and live ambient sounds, and by integrating all fortuitous sound events (or no-events) and accidents that emerge along the performance. The using of processes of selection in the sonic environment is extended also to recordings realized by each player, and the he/she live mixes during the collective performance. Each configuration is a point of emission and the output of each player is connected to a streaming server. So each player streams live and that permits to organize a collective improvisation.
For the Berlin version of the episode 2, each player could receive the other streams emitted by the others players, and thus could organize his/her own local mix in order to perceive the general movements of the improvisation and the plays of the other mike-heads. Because of the latendy due to the streaming techniques and process (here, on Icecast), each one of us integrates the delays and the specific temporality of a streaming collective performance. The sensation of improvisation is enhanced by the fact that is impossible to view the other players, to preview synchronized sound gestures and to play with the shifts of latency's delays. All works on surimposed and lightly altered listenings.
A common score considered such as a list of common instructions, or better as timeline rule, was proposed for the Berlin event like a framework that each one can interprete. It was closer to a grid of approaches could can help to cross his/her own environment and to develop possibly lines of fictions, than a regular musical score with a precise organization of time events and nature of sounds. Because each one of us could receive streams from the others, like a sound feedback, we could organize our proper mix of the performance. Thus a variety of mixes and facets of the same live performance is possible. In a similar way, each performer can set up his/her own emission place such a listening room for a local audience. This proposition is a possibility to cut with the frustation and isolation of the performer in a network performance. I.e. to use the dislocation like a quality of the Sobralasolas! network system.
The place at Pfefferberg Haus 13 in Berlin was organized around one of the performer (on this occasion, Jerome), in order to receive a larger audience in the frameworks of the Art's Birthday 2010 event. This place became a listening room more than a concert room, in the sense that the focus was more on the discovery that the event is based on a live collective network performance. Thus we used video-projections of the follow-up of communications between performers and a quadriphonic sound spatialization. A chat session on IRC was used for intercommunications between the performers, that permitted to offer an evolutive key for the audience to discover this configuration geographically distributed and multi-staged, and in parallel to some entries of the score such as possible orientations in the simultaneous plays. This system will be able to be improved in next performances considering the presence (or absence) of members of the ensemble in the same room face to a convoked audience (like a regular concert), and concerning the chat text like a resulting fiction of the live performance (this could be extended to multiple chat sessions by involving remote audiences for instance), and technical solutions for better sound feedbacks and sound streaming.
The mixage(s) was live produced by following the waves and fluctuations of each remote performance. The whole is fully improvised at time, by combining spoken words, voices, sound improvisations, field recordings, etc., starting from the main axis of the project that focuses on sound explorations of (local) environments and spaces, distance and remote listening & play, and local and everyday lively ambiances full of accidents, relationships and discoveries.
SOBRALASOLAS! ep2 (2010) will be produced in collaboration with Locus Sonus (locusonus.org), nujus.net and creacast.com. This radio work was commissioned by Deutschlandradio Kultur 2010.
Special thanks to Marcus Gammel.
Graphisme / Cover art designer & graphics : Caroline Bouissou
Webdesign and webmaster : Jérôme Joy