Orobouros by Robin Parmar :: January 24, 2008; 7:30 pm :: premiering at Excursions 2008 Performance Art Festival, Belltable, 69 O’Connell Street, Limerick, Ireland.

The piece takes its name from the snake which forever eats its own tail. It is most often seen as the principle of eternity and indeed of the universe itself. But it also represents a feedback loop, and hence the mind of the subject viewing it. In the centre of the Belltable gallery is a microphone, standing alone. A hum of energy fills the space, textured noise emanating from a number of radios scattered throughout. Continue reading

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOknyZ7QHM0[/youtube] Continue reading

Miya Masaoka is a musician, composer and performance artist. She has created works for koto, laser interfaces, laptop and video and written scores for ensembles, chamber orchestras and mixed choirs. In her performance pieces she has investigated the sound and movement of insects, as well as the physiological responses of plants, the human brain, and her own body.

Helen Thorington: Miya, you were trained in Japanese court music as well as contemporary music and I understand have expanded on the playing techniques of the koto – first by using extended techniques, but more importantly, by building a Laser Koto. For those who don’t know, can you tell us about the koto and how you developed it? What is the Laser Koto and how does it work? Continue reading

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqjD06D51z8[/youtube]

Botborg present live audio-visual performances using a complex feedback web, consisting of audio and video mixers, screens and camera. In this web, sound and vision are blended into a self perpetuating synaesthesia of interdependent colour and rhythm, generated (in real time) entirely by device feedback. Continue reading

Usman Haque designs interactive architecture systems and researches how people relate to each other and their spaces. “The domain of architecture has been transformed by developments in interaction research, wearable computing, mobile connectivity, people-centered design, contextual awareness, RFID systems and ubiquitous computing. These technologies alter our understanding of space and change the way we relate to each other. We no longer think of architecture as static and immutable; instead we see it as dynamic, responsive and conversant. Our projects explore some of this territory.” Performative works include:

Sky Ear, 2004: This non-rigid “cloud”, made up of several hundred glowing helium balloons will be embedded with mobile phones. As visitors to the event call into the cloud to listen to the distant electromagnetic sounds of the sky (including whistlers and spherics), their mobile phone calls will change the local hertzian topography; these disturbances in the electromagnetic fields inside the cloud will alter the glow intensity of that part of the balloon cloud. Quicktime video: 19 MB
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