Magnus Alexanderson & Sachiko Hayashi
PROJECTS
Audio-Visual Performance
You Saw Me Tomorrow
gesture-controlled live cinema performance 2010
In "You Saw Me Tomorrow" Sachiko performs what she calls "WiiSight", a real-time moving image improvisation technique she has developed using Nintendo Wii remote controller and Apple's webcam iSight. All visual information in "WiiSight" is taken live through built-in iSight on her laptop and processed live via Max/Jitter. No recorded material is used. The combination of "live video" and "remote controller" creates a true junction between real-time physical movements and visual manipulation in a live performance, where the two elements invoke, affect and merge in a confluence.
To Sachiko's "WiiSight" visual improvisation, Magnus creates EAM soundscape based on a loop technique with pre-composed sounds. The structure of the soundscape creation in real-time in relation to the "WiiSight" visual is the focal point of his performance.
"WiiSight" was developed in 2010 at USF in Bergen, where Sachiko was an artist-in-residence.
[beyond]
audio-visual interactive performance 2008
The interactive components (audio - visual) in [beyond] are linked via a computer programme (Max/Jitter) as well as via human perception to achieve flexible and yet complex structural audio-visual composition.
The visual focuses on 3 female Noh theatre players, filmed in Tokyo 2006. Although the Noh theatre is traditionally performed by men Noh players only, some female Noh performers in recent years are starting to be acknowledged within Japan. The work serves also as a documentation of these female Noh theatre performers.
The audio, EAM performed live via midi-guitar, sampler, signal processor and looper, is based on various existing practices and experiences to compose and perform music. To find flexibility and create a mobile structure, the music is neither improvised nor completely notated; it is a combination of instrumentation of sounds prepared uniquely for its moving imagery and flexible execution of those sounds unpredetermined in time and manner.
[beyond] is an amalgam of various human expressions both on personal and collective levels. The divisions that have been inherent in our world - tradition/new, composition/improvisation, West/East, machine/human - are all fused in [beyond] as essential part of personal histories of the performers.
The visual of [beyond] was partially realised at the Experimental Television Center in New York, where Sachiko spent time as an artist-in-residence.
Our sincere thanks to : Chris Cutler, Hikaru Uzawa, Hisashi Uzawa, Yoko Yamamura, Naoya Mura, Yoko Fukuoka, Yasuyo Hirai
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Single Channel Video
MASH Video Trilogy
Stretched in Dark (2001), White Hole (1997), Skin add Scratch (1996)
The three works- skin add scratch (1996), White Hole (1997), Stretched in Dark (2001)- together form a trilogy in which various combinations of electronic music and moving images are sought and implemented.
Our primary concern in creating this trilogy has been to proceed beyond Cage-Cunningham tradition, in which audio-visual co-ordination has been eliminated in order to break up its primal-subordinate co-existence. Our objective has been to re-introduce co-relation between the two components without one element being submissive to the other.
In the trilogy three kinds of moment both in sound and vision can be traced; a) the moment of repetition, i.e., a moment which is repeated exactly or slightly modified: b) the moment of succession, i.e., series of moments with no or little resemblances to or connection with the other parts; c) the moment of progression, i.e., a single extended moment which proceeds with changes and variations within a specific frame of expression and ends without an accentuated sense of finality.
Each element in each piece of the trilogy has different type of the moment described above. The various combinations of these moments between audio and visual experiences can be well traced throughout the trilogy.
Each work of the trilogy can be shown independently as well as a trilogy as a whole.
"Stretched in Dark" was comissioned by the Swedish National Institute for Concerts. The whole trilogy was chosen for a national tour by the same institution and was shown at 8 different cities in Sweden.