(10/11/2013)
Creative Media Colloquium website
In a concert at the CityU SCM, Suzueri played piano and some sound effects while Satoru Higa took care of the visual part (projection). The patches on the projection were doubling as musical instruments as well as visuals – that was the most interesting feature. In the first track, this was taken to the extreme, where Higa opened up a number of pop-up windows, which were used to ‘play back’ sound, as well as being animated and moving around the screen. I found the opening piece (this was electronics only, no piano) the most fresh and new, exemplifying the concept that would be used throughout the performance. Once the piano (Suzueri) kicked in, starting from the second piece, the sound became much more tame and uniform. Like a conservative version of Alva Noto and Ryuchi Sakamoto. So while the visuals looked nice, the gap with the music was getting bigger and the piano did not keep up with the expectations created by the projection. I found the idea of using patches as musical instruments and visuals – shared with everyone on the desktop screen – entertaining, breaking with the ‘laptop musician’ stereotype, the musical part unfortunately did not manage to break with the ‘piano’ stereotypes.