manta-iphone-vatech
I was slated to do two pieces on the Saturday night concert. I also gave a few presentations and met with several of Ico's students. Ico specifically asked me to somehow present My Book of Dreams. I had done 'readings' from it in the past, so it wasn't difficult to get it set.
More difficult was the piece linked on this page (manta-iphone-vatech). I wanted to do something with a performative aspect (ooooh, I'm using academic-speak!) so it wouldn't be too awful-boring, like my typical laptop-performance mode with our two-laptop/mandolin trio PGT. Mandolinist Terry is our 'front man', actually playing the mandolin. Gregory and I generally look like we're answering e-mail. Weirdly.
So I decided to go-it-alone(!) and create a framework for a solo improvisation performance. For this piece, I decided to let the framework be dictated by the control interfaces I used, Jeff Snyder's manta and my own ancient iPhone using our iRTcmix software. These interfaces required me to actually play them, hence a real-live performance. They didn't crash! The result is the piece above.
People seemed to enjoy it. About halfway through the piece my various
jitters and fears subsided and I was able to get that performance-kick
that signals a part of life worth remembering.
Brad Garton
April, 2011
