The week in november 2009, I stayed at STEIM, I worked on two different setups.

One is my LiSa-based Live-setup with an aditional old drummachine, the Rythm-Ace, the antecessor of the TR 77, Rolands first drummachine ever. which means, no editing, only presets with a lot of Mambo in it. I use it for goofing around with some kind of semi-serious impropop and later used it live in a duo with Eugene Chadbourne.

For the other setup, I use is a Micro Modular to produce a feedback, that I control with fotoresistors placed in a pizzabox -sized board on a table, with a dimmable lamp over it, there are 12 sensors to control 12 parameters. With my hands I produce shadows on the pizzabox to ‚play’ the feedback. I can just use the dimmer to modulate, I use coins to cover single sensors and as well two small plastic stroboscopes with adjustable speed to produce patterns. Itried to use a drumloop (with a tap-pad) with the stroboscope and quite like it. The sound is rather raw and prickly and the Micro- Modular-patch reacts pretty unpredictable. I put this setup together in search for an electronic instrument, that I can use in a solo performance. There is the good question, if you can improvise solo at all and I find it inspiring to work with material, that is good for unexpected moves. (more…)