Launching Piece 2, for the launch of Chris Mann's new book, Dec 13 and 14, 2016
Wednesday, December 14, 2016 at 8:41PM Kent MacCarter, of Cordite Books, has just published two volumes of poetry, one by Chris Mann, and the other by Kris Hemensley, two of Melbourne's most interesting poets. Kent invited me to perform a small piece for the launch of Chris's book, with Gig Ryan launching Kris's book on the same evening. (She is seen sitting next to me in the first video, patiently waiting her turn.)
The launch took place on the evening of December 13, and it was very well attended. Here's a picture (all pictures by Catherine Schieve) of the assembled crowd in Collected Works Nicholas Building aerie.
Here are the covers of Chris' and Kris' books.
Here's Kent MacCarter introducing the evenings proceedings.
And here is Kris Hemensley reading from his new book.
And here's a one minute excerpt of my performance on the night. Here I'm doing a smaller "chamber" version of the piece, using only an iPhone and an iPad and two Marshall stacks. Like the pix, the video is by Catherine Schieve.
Here's a picture of the crowd listening to me.
The next day, back in Daylesford, we videoed the full seven minutes of the piece, this time in the version for 3 devices. The iPhone is playing the small collage of time-stretched Chris Mann sounds I made using the Composers Desktop Project sofware. The Windows 8 Tablet is playing other versions of the processing of the sounds made with the same CDP processes. The iPad has Chris Mann's own app, "the use," on it (also available on-line as "theuse.info"). The idea of performing the piece outdoors and on the verandah was Catherine's, as was having me stand up and placing the Windows 8 tablet and the iPad fairly far apart. She was right, that arrangement produced a much livelier performance on my part. Thanks to Kent for commissioning the piece, to Catherine for videoing and lots of great creative input, to Chris, for years and years of friendship, and to Kris for hosting the event. A wonderful time was had by all.
Oh yes, and Cordite Books, PO Box 393, Carlton South, VIC 3053 Australia for the finest in contemporary Australian poetry! (http://corditebooks.org.au/)
