Posted 22 June 2011 by admin in Talks | 1 comment

As I untangle the cable salad, I’m remembering a few highlights from my long weekend of gigs:

I was lucky enough to perform on theremin in front of the Babbage Difference Engine No 2 (in the Science Museum) and to share the bill with Professor Elemental and a gingerbread man (at the Absinthe Ball), an electronic pig (at Interesting 11) and Randoph Matthews and Byron Johnson (at Cabaret Futura -- Randolph has an extraordinarily beautiful voice).

Interesting 11 was a day of geeky pursuits in the Conway Hall, London, that well and truly lived up to its name. The day was put together by Russell Davies and it was in the morning’s Hack Circus, curated by the marvellous Leila Johnston, where I did some theremin wrangling. Accompanied by my robotic vent doll Hugo, I talked a little about my approach to live performance with automata and spoke one-to-one with assorted interesting folk who wanted to try the theremin for themselves.

The Circus included a fine song about 16k computers from MJ Hibbett which brought back fond memories of my first computer, a 16k ZX Spectrum which my dad won at a carpet trade show. Other highlights included a tomato caviar workshop; a beautiful drawing machine from Sandy Noble, based on a pen plotter;  an encounter with the Domesday Project, something I hadn’t seen since the early 1990s; and a giant modular synth built by David Cranmer.

The Domesday Project

This was a compendium of words and images about life in Britain, stored on laser disk and largely collected by school children. Run by the BBC, the project was completed in 1986. This Domesday Reloaded site tells you a little more about the project but it doesn’t show many of the photographs themselves. The amateur photographers went around their shops and homes, snapping their living rooms, coats and scarves hanging in the hall, the loo brush and bleach behind the cystern -- all the trappings of everyday life. The result is extraordinary: an archive of images, depicting Britain in the 1980s, as it would look if something had spirited all the people away. The photos have a wonderful, eerie Cold War charm about them. I would love to work with Domesday Reloaded on a live performance to accompany some projections from the disks.

Nine Owls in a Baguette

David Cranmer is the maker behind Nine Owls in a Baguette. Our paths have crossed before -- we both played at the Steampunk evening 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, for White Mischief a few months ago. David brought along his famous pig and a huge, old-school modular synth that he’d built from scratch. This made sounds so fruity, it took your breath away. The synth can be controlled using CV (control voltage), a system that was used to make synths communicate with each before the advent of midi.
As a theremin player, I find CV is much more satisfying than midi as it offers a continuous signal, rather than one that works in midi-like steps. I can use it to play slides and fine tremelo effects. My Etherwave Pro synth also has CV out so we were able to link the two up and use my theremin to control the sounds of David’s synth. The right hand controlled pitch and the left hand controlled filtering. It’s a shame we didn’t get a recording -- it was a wonderful effect. I hope David and I can link up our machines again for a live performance somewhere. I’ll bring the capes and dry ice.

Oh -- and I also had time to visit the Fryer’s Delight, one of London’s finest cafés. Although the street has been annexed by identikit global coffee companies, this family company is still going strong on the Theobald’s Road. Fishcake and chips in the Fryer’s Delight made Interesting 11 a perfect day.