Thursday, May 03, 2007

Flock


As a quasi-nerd with a background in Chemistry who finds herself working for a professional symphony, I can appreciate the genius of Jason Freeman's Flock.

According to the project website, the piece "is a full evening performance work for saxophone quartet, conceived to directly engage audiences in the composition of music by physically bringing them out of their seats and enfolding them into the creative process. During the performance, the four musicians and 60-80 audience members move freely around the performance space. A computer vision system determines the locations of the audience members and musicians, and it uses that data to generate performance instructions for the saxophonists, who view them on wireless handheld displays mounted on their instruments. The data is also artistically rendered and projected on multiple video screens to provide a visual experience of the score. "

So the question is, is it really music? If not, what defines music that excludes this concept piece? The piece certainly raises audience participation to a new level.

Like the adventurous composers before him, Freeman's work pushes new boundaries to seek a experienec of the art. Freeman has also developed an interactive program for solo violin called Graph Theory.

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