Exhibited at The Science Museum’s Dana Centre as part of Takeaway Festival. May 19th-30th 2009.
A while ago, I filmed 25 people individually in a recording studio. I played them each note in the classical human vocal range, and asked them to sing it for four seconds. This was surprisingly difficult, even for more experienced singers. Few people could sing in tune, or cover anything like the vocal range I asked for. But the attempts were valiant, and the results were varied and unique.
I then edited these performances into a series of note-long movies. With the programming expertise of artist/code genius Evan Raskob, I developed a custom computer program that allows these movies to be played back in the manner of a vintage Fairlight synthesiser.
The result is an fully-playable instrument that allows this amateur choir to be played like a piano, with three octaves range, twenty notes of polyphony and pressure-sensitivity. The instrument has been field-tested by Chad Lelong, a professional jazz pianist.
Uniquely, it also allows the singers to be seen as they perform. A dynamic visual composition is built up as the instrument is played. Their faces are projected onto a group of identical shapes, to form a ghostly disembodied choir.
I work a lot at visually interpreting existing music. Pitch Control looks at the reverse idea, where musicians adopt their playing style to achieve a pleasing visual composition. During testing, Chad, our pianist test pilot, instinctively altered his playing style to make it ‘look better’. Pitch Control also subtly explores some of the issues surrounding ‘user-generated content’, particularly ownership and authorship.
Some external links about Pitch Control:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-05/19/takeaway-festival-of-diy-media.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXjmuLASyZ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EURV81awDzg
http://www.jotta.com/magazine/video/96/the-takeaway-diy-media-festival
You can click on the photos below to make them bigger.
Click here to see a movie of the installation.
For more information and high-res photos, please contact Marcus Lyall.
