Posted by: Hilary Martin on May 25, 2007 04:28 PM | Comments (0)

So, went to the ping on Tuesday. I brought my friend Jessica to the show. She had never been to an electronic music event before.

This is what the information looks like in the ping list email:

05.22.07 . The PiNG Presents RADiO iN AMBiENCE -
A special presentation for DEEP WIRELESS in collaboration with
NEW ADVENTURES IN SOUND ART featuring GEEK WEEKEND with
ROBERT HOARE (Berlin Germany) & STEVEN SAUVÉ (Hamilton ON)
+ STEPHEN KELLY and ELEANOR KING (Halifax NS)
@ the UNDERGROUND downstairs @ the DRAKE HOTEL
1150 Queen St. W @ Beaconsfield . W of Ossington . E of Dufferin
TUESDAY MAY 22ND . 8PM . PWYC (5$ suggested)

For the 5th year in a row, RADiO iN AMBiENCE transmits live at the PiNG. Tune in as Toronto/Berlin sound artist Robert Hoare and Hamilton synthguy Steven Sauvé bring their Geek Weekend project back to the PiNG stage. Also along for this year's spin on the radio dial are PiNG newcomers, the Halifax duo Stephen Kelly and Eleanor King. Join us as our Deep Wireless guests coax the radio ether into an outer-worldly electro ambient chill.

Missed the first part of the show, but Jamie Todd (naisa board member and ambient ping co-organizer) graciously provided these pics.

Steve Kelly and Eleanor King are a Halifax duo who do great weird things with objects and diy electronics. They hosted a workshop at InterAccess last week on how to create a contact mic out of the innards of one of those singing greeting cards, for example.

So take that and make it into a full blown performance and you get, well, what looks like a hockey stick assisting in the creation of electronic music.

I wish I had made it in time for the first set, because the folks I talked to when I *did* arrive seemed sad for me.

More about what they do here:
http://www.thejustbarelys.ca
http://ckdu.dal.ca/~barelymusic/art.html

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Jessica and I got a couple of beers - a Guinness for me; a Cinquante for her (i.e., a 50, the champagne of Queen West according to the bartender) – and headed to the seating in the lower level of the bar to take it all in.

Robert Hoare and Steven Sauvé were onstage. Steven (on the left) is based in Hamilton. Robert (on the right) is an expat Ontarian in Berlin. He discovered that he could make the kind of music that he was interested in making and get paid to do it, so he stayed in Germany. Sounds sensible to me. They get together every now and then as the project Geek Weekend when Robert comes back to Canada.

Robert Hoare : http://www.robhoare.de
Steven Sauvé: http://www.karmafarm.ca

I loved their dynamic as they played. They were incorporating a live web radio stream plus whatever sound files they brought with them, and layered in synth (Steven) and saxophone (Robert). Steven lived up to the Geek moniker, even though it was a Weeknight, at times laughing and jumping back from his laptop with this huge grin on his face, surprised by the zeros and ones he was conjuring. Robert was reserved in comparison but wore bemused smile for most of the event.

Jessica and I had a discussion about how to best describe his smile and that was the word we agreed on: bemused. It was like listening to friends swapping inside jokes.

My friend leaned over and whispered, “I want to know what they are thinking! What are they looking at when they're looking at their computer screens?” I remember being at Mutek one year and (apart from Tujiko Noriko’s set) looking at these performers and thinking the same thing. “They look like they are just up there checking their email. They can’t be. Are they?” Jessica had never seen a Max patch.

After the show I asked Robert if he would show Jessica how it all worked, which he graciously did, explaining the details of the web radio feed and what the program was doing in microtime (which I cannot reproduce here, except to say it was a great explanation, and then an old friend showed up and the conversation was interrupted, which happens when you are visiting from Berlin). I’ll do a post later on Max, with Darren’s help, but it looks something like algorithms and coin flips drawn up in a nice flow chart. It’s often hard to connect the music to the program, but that’s what people like Hoare and Sauvé are good at. Lucky me.

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Jessica had a great question about listening to improvised, collaborative music, which is “How do you tell if it is successful or not? Are there bits that you consider good and bits you consider disappointing?” I guess there were parts that engaged her and parts where she was waiting for the next thing. Not surprising for a first electronic music experience.

With any show, because there are shifts (pace, texture, kinds of sound) I always leave room for the buffer zone when musicians move from one theme or section to the next, the difference between when they’re finding something and when they’re actually in it, and then moving to the next. I thought Sauvé and Hoare moved us through some pretty varied sonic spaces.

So I told her I just take it all as it comes and then take it all together at the end. Obviously there is more to it than this, and other people would give her a different answer. I’m going to ask people more about how they listen this weekend.

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More from Deep Wireless 2007 :
« It Is to Laugh (and perhaps have a pint or two and sing a song) | Republic of Safety »