Thursday 25 February 2010

Welcome to Mars on Archive.Org



I think from the moment when I started my first experiments with writing, I have always been fascinated by the differences and tensions between script and oral traditions in language. That which is written cannot also be spoken with the same facility: each requires its own disciplines and exploratory approaches. This is one reason why I welcome any opportunity to work with dialogue, interviews, discussions, live broadcasts, readings and public panels as a means of encountering once again the spontaneity and drama of the spoken word – and why in particular I enjoy working with musicians and composers. Setting text that is neither sung nor ordered in a traditional manner within a live music and sound performance never fails to have interesting outcomes.

This is also why I was pleased recently to receive a post from Mark Pilkington via his Strange Attractor blog that a recording of the Welcome to Mars performance made at last month’s Strange Attractor Salon is now up on Archive.Org. You can link to it directly by clicking here. My thanks are due once again to Mark Pilkington and Bruce Woolley for their radiophonic interpretations and to Simon James for his original recorded soundtrack. It was a cold and wet night, as I recall, but their collective energy soon warmed things up. My main recollection, listening back to the recording, was of struggling with a failing light source and having to read most of the text by angling the pages to get the best from the flickering video images projected behind me – hence, the occasional break and stumble in the reading. However, that’s also why the live word is such an exhilarating challenge.

See also:
Welcome to Mars at Strange Attractor Salon
Strange Attractor Salon: A Site Report
The Wunderkammer in the Cellar

Pictured above: Bruce Woolley tunes up; KH struggles with the light, photographs courtesy of Agent Jbot.

No comments: