Gregg Biermann

PIPES

This piece features composer/flutist Wendy Luck, performing on several different kinds of flutes. Pipes does not document a performance so much as it creates a performance through my editing of a small amount of recorded materials. To do the piece I had to make a recording of Wendy playing various flutes. Almost all of the audio and video is in sync. I then broke the material down into thirty or so short sequences, which range in length from a fraction of a second to a few seconds. There are three distinct sections, although there is no pause between them. The first section has a single stream of audio and video, and new melodies and visual patterns are created through juxtaposition. The second section has two streams of audio and video. New melodies and visual patterns are created through juxtaposition as well as superimposition. The third section has four streams of audio and video. The four-voice canon of the audio in this section blurs the individual melodic lines. The image becomes almost abstract due to the four layers of superimposition. Because we have seen all of the material before in the first two sections, it is possible to sense that all of the audio and video remains in sync in spite of the complexity.

** Note: There are a number of ways that this work can be presented:

1) As a video recording. 

2) As a video recording with Wendy Luck improvising on the flute live.

3) As a real-time video piece triggered by Ron Mazurek from a MIDI keyboard.

4) As a real-time video piece triggered by Mazurek along with Luck on flute.