LONG experimental film and live music

JoshL

JoshL

Okay, longwinded babbling here. I'm trying to condense a lot of related ideas here into something coherent, though at best an experiment. I've been reading about insanely long films, largely experimental films as one might expect, or multi-part TV movies. Basic list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_films_by_running_time

When I was doing more ambient music, I had the opportunity to play a couple long shows. I've always been interested in Robert Rich's "sleep shows"; one of my major conceptual influences. While never having attended one, he did a "live in the studio" release of one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somnium_(Rich) 7 hours of ambient/drone music. Really good and highly recommended if you like that sort of thing. Anyway, I had done two 3 hour plus shows (a lot more composed than Rich's stuff, though with a lot of improv within a set framework). As well as a few "album in a weekend" experiments, pushing my endurance.

Also an influence, new age musician Kitaro has an annual tradition where he performs on taiko from sunrise to sunset. It's more a personal endurance ritual than it is about creating music. Before I started my current dayjob, I was planning something not dissimilar; a day in the studio, largely improvising as non-stop as I could. Shooting for 24 hours, but I don't think I'm anywhere near ready to do that.

Anyway, it occured to me the other day that it would be fun doing a live score to one of those insanely long films. I'm not a Warhol fan, but I DO work less than a block away from the Warhol museum (and have seen some great performances there). I thought it might be fun to work with them in doing a live performance set to "Empire" (8 hours of footage of the Empire State Building). However, Warhol's entire point to that piece was "anti-film", so that would be subverting his entire artistic intent (you know, making it good!)

Thinking further about this, it would of course be better doing something new; something with a message beyond a comment on the medium. It would really be neat to push as far as I could go, rather than setting a fixed time limit. To really do that, the film would need to be edited live as well (or at least stopped whenever I collapsed!). While I don't know that serious editing could really be done on the fly, the video DJ approach could work. Prepare clips and/or video loops and trigger/transition and such live. Nearly impossible with a coherent narrative, but with an experimental film (again, Empire is one shot of one building for 8 hours) it's certianly do-able.

Now, of course, something like this, few people would come, and fewer still would stay the duration. Warhol's previous anti-film, Sleep (John Giorno sleeping for 5 hours and 21 minutes) was attended by 9 people...2 of whom left in the first hour. And that was Andy Warhol, not some minor name ambient artist (as opposed to those big name ones!) with little to no draw! The first 3 hour show I did was a gallery opening, so people mostly came for that, though many did stop to listen to the music (couldn't pay too much attention to the crowd; I was VERY busy!). The second had a small turnout (10-15 people) but a surprising number of them stayed for the entire duration.

I'm curious to hear what other people think about this. I couldn't do it for at least a year (lots of projects on the plate, which is a good thing!) and would need at least a couple months to prepare. Even if not doing Warhol's film, I could reach out to the museum and see what it would take to use the space (they've got a theater; I've seen films and music there). And, hey, in the case of a live film collaboration, we'd only have to make it 9 hours to be in the top 10 longest experimental films! I don't think I could play music for 10 days straight, so the top place is right out...

Oh, and if anyone is interested, I can post one of my previous long format shows. I did manage to record the first continuously (and released it as .mp3s on a cd-r. Oddly enough, sold more copies of that than anything else I've ever done). The second my minidisc crapped out on me after the first hour, so I had to record the other two hours in the studio to have a document of it.
 
That sounds very interesting.

I've had the opportunity to make music in an art gallery before- I studied fine art at college before deciding to do my degree in music, and my final exhibition was an installation piece with music. Like in your case, it probably had my most involved audience out of anything I've done. I think it's just that people with a passion for art usually have quite a long attention span.

As for the live setup, how familiar are you with MAX MSP?
 
Hmmm... good topic, good questions. It is really difficult to engage an audience for an extended period of time, especially without a narrative thread. If there was some hook to the show, something that ratchets up the performance art angle, that might be a consideration. I'm thinking of spectacle performers like the guy (can't think of his name right now) who lives in a bubble for weeks or hangs upside down from a crane as long as he can. I'm not a fan of that sort of show, but adding an element of novelty or danger or hype might help to get people's attention, as long as it doesn't cheapen or dull the concept.

Wasn't there some woman who lived at an IKEA or was it the MoMA? for a week? a month?

Anyhow, just drawing some comparisons. I know you're going for something different. Let me think more about this. I love public art and stumbling upon these kind of performances.

There's an event in Boston (I think) that is called the James Joyce Ramble. http://www.ramble.org/ It combines two types of endurance: reading the works of James Joyce and running a race. I guess there's someone who reads Ulysses the entire day.

So I guess it's about enduring in some form of event, going the distance as a performer, and hoping to reach and connect with an audience hungry for that sort of thing.
 
I've never used MAX MSP, but I'm familiar with the concept. It sort of works on the tracker/programmer concept of music performance, right? I've never used a computer live (for many years didn't even use a sequencer); I tend to be a hardware guy. Looks pretty cool though, very flexible and the user designed toolbox stuff is neat. And, hey, according to wikipedia, Vince Clarke is a user (then again, what DOESN'T he use!)

If memory serves, Flicker, it was David Blaine who did the endurance stunts recently (or, at least, he received the most press recently). Received a pretty rough reception in London! The Ramble sounds pretty fun though! Good comparisons; there is a lot of similarity in what I would like to do in that sort of performance. Also a nod to the John Cage piece "As Slow As Possible", currently being performed in Germany on an organ, begun in 2001 and scheduled to be finished in 2640. Sort of novel, but a little more focused on the concept, rather than the actual music or performance.

Further research into the Warhol films reveals that Empire was screened with a live musical accompaniment in North Carolina last year. While that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to do it, it does take away the "First Time Evar!!11!!" selling point of the proposal. I *could* attempt to sell them on a double feature with that and Sleep, which would put me at 13 1/2 hours of film to score live.

I am more leaning towards collaborating with a new film, and the "film edited live" concept really appeals to me, but what then would define it as a film, rather than a live video performance? What would make my work a live filmscore rather than just a way-too-long ambient performance set to video? And, of course, why would anyone want to see/hear it? Furthermore, while exploration of these concepts certainly has artistic merits, "the medium is the message" has long been explored and played out. Again, bringing up Warhol, the only significance in these films is making the viewer wonder exactly what qualifies as a film. Pretentious of me, but I'd like to move on to deeper questions, once the medium is sorted.

I've been reading/researching the process of putting together a proposal for a museum. Had I gone to school for this sort of thing, I'm sure I would have already been taught this ;-) If the Warhol says no, there are a lot of museums around town I could try. I might even try contacting the local film school (Pittsburgh Filmmakers). I could just book a space, but the whole point of going through a gallery or whatnot is to take all the promotion and advertising off my shoulders and I can spend a few months working on the performance. Hell, I could even contact local techno promoters and get booked in a chill-out room at a local rave (oh, no, we don't use that word anymore...they're PARTIES). Though the crowd in that environment might dig the music more as music, much, if not most of the artistic significance and intent.

Still just kinda brainstorming. Anyone here have much experience working with artfilm/non-narrative film?
 
As someone who runs an internet radio station with an ambient format (Yes, Robert Rich and Kitaro are on my playlist), I have to admit I do a LOT of cutting of the lengths of most tracks in order to keep the audience coming back -- and these are people that tuned to hear ambient music in the first place and many of them are not keen with long tracks.

While concept films are cool to discuss, I'm not so sure about beyond that. Just my 2 cents.

Good luck!
 
Very awesome, by the way, on the radio station! If you know ambient, it might make more sense to you than others if I say I draw a lot from Aube, Ultra Milkmaids and Vidna Obmana.

Anyway, I get what you are saying. Particularly on a radio station, people want to hear a variety of things they haven't before, and if they dislike a track, knowing is over in less than 20 minutes is always nice ;-) Listening to albums, I personally gravitate towards long tracks/themed albums/etc; at that point you tend to KNOW if you like the music on the record or not.

Live is a tricky situation. The one long show I did was a gallery opening; people were occupied doing something else while I was playing. There was a lot of movement in that piece too; it broke down into 26 movements, some more droning, some more melodic. The second show was a lot dronier; 12 movements over 3 hours, at a coffee shop (not long before I played there, black tape for a blue girl played there. Always neat playing venues where artists you like have played). I was surprised that people stayed, but quite a few of them did. Might have had more if I had some sort of video, rather than just watching one guy frantically hunched over stacks of synths and effects!

This is why, ideally, the Warhol would be very suited for what I want to do. They have a theater where I could perform and the movie could play. During museum hours, people could come in and go as they please. Friday nights they have a cocktail party thing. Again, I could still be performing, and people could again come in for a bit, leave when they are bored, chat with friends, etc. In a VERY ideal world I could get my music piped in through the entire museum, but that might be pushing it. It's trying to find a balance between a) the performance challenge I want to set for myself, b) giving people a framework with which they can understand and enjoy it (and the ability to do both of those while doing something else) and c) create something of significance with the idea of incredibly long films, which I agree with you, aren't exactly anything fun to watch.

2 cents, as always, appreciated! Still working on this idea!
 
Josh, It looks like you've been giving this a lot of thought and it appears if you don't do this project, you might regret it down the road. So, I'd suggest you just go for it and see what the heck happens. Besides it would appear that YOU would get a kick out of doing it and that is the most important reason for making a film, is it not?
 
JoshL said:
I've never used MAX MSP, but I'm familiar with the concept. It sort of works on the tracker/programmer concept of music performance, right? I've never used a computer live (for many years didn't even use a sequencer); I tend to be a hardware guy. Looks pretty cool though, very flexible and the user designed toolbox stuff is neat. And, hey, according to wikipedia, Vince Clarke is a user (then again, what DOESN'T he use!)
Click to expand...

It's not really music software, it's just anything you want it to be. It opens as a blank screen and you build a program up like a flowchart. So with enough hard work you'd be able to build yourself a patch to allow you to trigger video, synthesise sounds, sample and loop, granualise, add effects, generate random combinations of the above and pretty much anything else.

Just give it a look. If I remember correctly you're a mac person- that means there's some other really cool electro-acoustic composition software available too. I'd dig the links up for you but Indian internet is terrible.
 
JoshL said:
Anyway, it occured to me the other day that it would be fun doing a live score to one of those insanely long films. I'm not a Warhol fan, but I DO work less than a block away from the Warhol museum (and have seen some great performances there). I thought it might be fun to work with them in doing a live performance set to "Empire" (8 hours of footage of the Empire State Building). However, Warhol's entire point to that piece was "anti-film", so that would be subverting his entire artistic intent (you know, making it good!)

Thinking further about this, it would of course be better doing something new; something with a message beyond a comment on the medium. It would really be neat to push as far as I could go, rather than setting a fixed time limit. To really do that, the film would need to be edited live as well (or at least stopped whenever I collapsed!). While I don't know that serious editing could really be done on the fly, the video DJ approach could work. Prepare clips and/or video loops and trigger/transition and such live. Nearly impossible with a coherent narrative, but with an experimental film (again, Empire is one shot of one building for 8 hours) it's certianly do-able.
Click to expand...

I love it. I can imagine you in an art gallery - in London this would be somewhere on the South Bank where there are numerous art installations and experiments in music and vision take place.

How about music to ask questions of great themes? If music exists in a place between words and primal feelings why not use the feelings mixed with social imagery to create tension and ask questions of that imagery? Ideas are love / hate, peace / war etc...

Of course, you'd need to assemble a crew and for live cutting, you would need an editor crazy enough to want to do that. It's not easy - in fact if you're shooting live, you'd need at least two cameras with individuals uploading in turns to the poor sucker, I mean, nice volunteer who'd be live cutting.

But I love this kind of stuff. If it was in London, I'd be there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top