Comments on -ect -act

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Reviewer 1’s Comments

That both projectionist-performer are co-authors of these excerpts renders more questions than clarifications. While Lynette Quek purports to form links between image and sound, ect – act seems more antecedent-consequent reliant. I’m not certain of the claim to challenge what a ‘visual performer’ and ‘sound maker’ is, since much of the duet performances were initiated (ect) by the performer and then en/act/ed… through improvisation. It does help the projectionist that the sonic and auditory stimuli are relatively sparse, angular and relatively linear to enable the verticality of the projectionist in the duet. However, where is the script and who’s script is it? Is Lynette’ work much like the fakebook format in jazz where skeletal frameworks gives the performer-projectionist compositional license? if so, what are where are the premises for future replications? Having ‘read’ these excerpts, I sense a paradox in the claim to demolish hierarchy, insofar as the projectionist is somehow reliant on sonic (musical) stimuli in the first instance, to be en/abled to respond. Considering this to be a duet between visual projectionist and cello/double bass asks certain questions of this excerpt. how are they combined? what criteria was chosen/decided on that led towards this three minute excerpt? were these extracts combined or combinatorial? Admittedly there are three/four segments compiled into this brief presentation but the question is, are these three/four movements in the entire excerpt? or are they the same skeletal frames which empower cellist/doublebassist – and by consequence projectionist – towards what Umberto Eco’s articulation of an Open Work? 

Reviewer 2’s Comments

Relevance to Symposium Theme

Once one has seen the section with the ‘cello it is clear how this video is relevant to the theme: the exploratory nature of the emerging relationship between the sound and visuals becomes clear in this part of the work. It also helps to recontextualise this in the second extract of the double bass performance. See below, though, I think the artist could make this more explicit.

How Well The Piece Works

The actual piece of music itself seems impressive. I enjoyed both the sound and the performance situation that was presented and the way that the artist has tried to blur the boundaries between the two. As an explanatory piece of practice research, it is less clear. The caption for the video is relatively brief and focuses mainly on the performance situation and not the working method, even tho the video shows the latter. When what I believe to be part of the development of the music (with the ‘cellist) was exposed, this made the practice much clearer to me and gave me an insight into the process and the work that was undertaken. I probably would have liked to have just seen some pointers (text) in the video indicating each section and acknowledging what it does and – importantly! – naming the performers as we see them! It’s clearly a strong piece of work, I watched the video more than once, but not everything was clear to me on first viewing.

SZT’s Question

I was very interested about how this entirely novel form of improvisation – improvised finger shadow puppetry in response to / combination with musical improvisation – made me think about the process. Improvising can be seen as creating a short term set of rules – learning the types of thing that do or don’t ‘work’ in a momentary context. And yet the momentary context and the inductive way in which we have each absorbed our musical language, point to the reasons why classically trained free improvisors always sound different to jazz trained free improvisors. Their top down approach has to be about breaking a different set of rules. How did you think about the creation of a visual language and its relation to the different musical performances in this instance?