fog




hardware:   Apple PowerBook G4/OSX
software:   RTcmix

This was the first 'laptop folk music' piece I did. Tae Hong Park had put together another Listening in the Sound Kitchen mini-conferences, and I had to come up with a piece. I decided to try doing something performance/interactive instead of bashing away at another tape-piece, because I had been doing readings from my book and I had been enjoying being a performer again -- plus I remembered that I actually liked connecting with an audience. The audience-performer model I think works best for me is the 'folk' thing, maybe because it's a part of my cultural background. I like the feeling of sharing rather than declaiming.

I'd also contemplated a set of uilleann pipes during a family trip to scout out colleges for Lian during the previous summer; suffice it to say that I am far far better typing on a laptop than trying to make the pipes sound like something other than demented sheep. [note: there's a whole story about this that I use as preface to "fog"; part of the show, ya know.] Instead of working to learn a Real folk instrument, I figured I could fake it on a laptop instead.

So this piece is the result. I wrote it with three people specifically in mind, but they will probably have no idea who they are. The initial idea for the song came while driving my family up to visit my sister in Massachusetts. Here are the words:
The performance interface code is available for downloading here.