| art.description.project | Tim Perkis is an experimental musician, filmmaker and author from Berkeley, California. He develops and plays with new forms of electronic instruments and computer generated sounds. In September and October 2016 Tim Perkis visited Academy of Music and Drama on a Villa Martinsson residency as a guest researcher. Perkis led an ensemble consisting of Gothenburg based electronic musicians/improvisers under the name “Tim Perkis Swedish Network” at two occasions, 12 October at Brötz and 13 October at the Academy of Music and Drama. At the two concerts Tim Perkis, Palle Dahlstedt, Per Anders Nilsson, and on one occasion at Brötz Olle Petersson, explored and investigated the musical possibilities of networking analog modular synthesizers and digital musical instruments. At the outset, the group decided to share a common master clock that everyone had access to. However, it was not mandatory to use it, rather a possibility for participating players to take benefit of in order to build complex rhythmic textures. All players, except Perkis, utilized similar instruments, namely a Bugbrand analogue modular synthesizer, although slightly different, however equipped with clock modules that allowed synchronization and subdivision. Perkis instrument however, is based on his own custom made instrument he has used since the 80s, but for this occasion modified in order to slave to incoming common clock and possibilities to subdivide the basic incoming clock pulse. The latter feature was considered a key feature, since it allowed experimenting with combining quite odd integer subdivisions of the master clock, such as 9:5:4:3. In such a setting the perception of a common pulse is weak or absent, but still creates a sense of commonness, which in a nutshell sums up the aesthetics of these concerts.
In addition, during his stay at HSM he developed a new graphic conduction system aimed at improvisation, The Blob System, which was premiered at a concert at HSM 13th October with students from HSM. The Blob system consists of a number of “blobs”, soft forms that moves over the screen and sometime agglomerate. Each participating player is assigned one particular blob to follow and playing according to his/her interpretation. When a blob is outside the playing field is a sphere that can take different sizes, and as long as a blob is within the field, she is allowed to play. | sv |
