“A place of images, plus sounds” (Chion, 1994)

The performance is a live experimentation using an interface that facilitates real-time audiovisual collage. Based on an original concept for audio-collage, Unrealtime (MAAP 2017), this expansion into the sphere of live visual editing brings into question many practices for the improviser. Through a series of Max-based audiovisual improvisations, the performance explores how the act of simultaneously improvising over two expressive mediums challenges the perceptual expectations of both performer and audience. The materials used range in abstraction, including both improvised and found audiovisual content. Aiming to probe Michel Chion’s assertion that “there is no image track and no soundtrack in the cinema, but a place of
images, plus sounds” (Chion, 1994), the live experimentations will attempt to utilise audiovisual consonance and dissonance in different combinations to produce on-the-fly emergences of abstract or arbitrary narratives. What kinds of conceptual and perceptual hierarchies, such as the perceived dominance of image over sound, emerge or remain suppressed? Can a human computer interface assist in the translation of musical aesthetics, such as non-idiomatic improvisation, into the realm of a visual aesthetic that evolves in real time?