Composer turns himself into a giant baton – BBC news get the big kazoo
COMPOSER Alexis Kirke has become a “giant baton“. That’s the conductor covered in sensors inside University of Plymouth’s new wave tank. His arm movements influence the 24 giant paddles that create waves. If he moves his arms up, the music shifts in pitch. With joystick, the volume can be raised and lowered.
Presumably, if he clutches his head in his hands, it stops.
Said Dr Kirke of his Orchestra Of Waves:
“I wanted to be like King Canute, controlling the waves. ‘The show went very well and people in the audience were asking whether they could buy the music. You are in a building and hear the noise of the waves and the smell and see them crashing down. There’s no way of explaining what it’s like to have dramatic sounds synchronized with that.”
Kirke is composer-in-residence for the Plymouth Marine Institute. Do many organisation’s have an in-house composer? In 2004, Radiohead’s guitarist Jonny Greenwood joined the BBC as its composer in residence. They should get him back. Big corporations are too reliant on words and pictures. Sounds could be used in place of lengthy shareholder statements, news reports and AGMs. Rather the sound of kazoo being blown into a plughole than another handwringing BBC news report on Jimmy Savile…
Posted: 1st, November 2012 | In: Technology Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
