Saturday, July 21, 2007

In Ponytails

Sidecar performs a very "techie" version of The Children's Hour tonight at 21Grand. I think it just may be quite beautiful. Here is what I learned this week while putting it all together with Miss A--

1. Hodge podge is a sand trap in the game of collage. One must assemble carefully and cleverly. Visual collage usually blots out all blank space, at least that's what I remember from fourth grade when the teacher told us to go at the stack of decades-old National Geographic magazines. With musical mixing and layering, I reach a point where I need space, I need the breathing room, I need a palate cleanser! Certain music (or video) moments are just so saturated with intent that a good dose of ambient "silence" seems so necessary.

2. If tech fails, be ok with laughing it off. I'm totally prepared for this one.

3. The idyllic can suddenly turn ominous. And what is fascinating to one may be gruesome to another. That's what makes art interesting!

4. Musicians, perhaps much more so than visual artists, are content to present a version that differs time and time again, that is new and unique with each performance. (I love this about my work with Anne! Every show can be different, even as we work around the same theme! Visual artists, before offering their work to the public, are more likely to--or do they have to--say, "this is done." I admire that decisiveness...and want to find ways to similarly determine various pieces of something as time-based as The Children's Hour. Can time's arrow be fixed? Even illusionally?)

5. Butterflies will have a mind of their own. Sigh...

2 Comments:

Take it from someone who relies on tech for every performance: Have backup systems. I travel with at least two of everything so that if one breaks, I can break out the second.

By Blogger Hucbald, at 10:47 PM  

Yes...and Anni and I naively wandered down the other path. Three computers. Two power adaptors. I give you one guess. ! But we dealt very gracefully with it...

By Blogger Heather Heise, at 10:18 AM  

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