Laser beams & projection screens & optic fibers to take you higher! Equipment setup at AVIT, the North American VJ Convention, Chicago, 2003. Check out the "Play-It-Again Sports" trampoline in front of the projection screen for extreme sport leaps through the cartoons, BOING!

Think it's easy to jump around in a bug outfit with synchronized music, projections, and vocal processing? Think again! Here's the technological muscle behind the funky, glam-rock shine.

To be a performance artist, not only must one master their art (as implied by the term, "performance art"), but one must also master their technology. With so much emphasis on goofball antics, technological innovations are often overlooked by audiences, critics, even performance artists themselves. In Laurie Anderson's Stories from the Nerve Bible, it is surprisingly evident how integral technology is to performance art. A classical composer not only has a mastery of music theory, they also have a mastery of their instruments.

Two MacBook Pros (left laptop for DJing music, right laptop for video presentation), audio-technica microphone with custom made microphone/remote-control housing for Keyspan presentation remote control, Mackie mixing board, video iPod, LCD projector remote control, and vocal processing rack (at bottom). Check out the "mind plasma!" trip-net on the right laptop.

The mind plasma! trip-net control panel GUI with hyperlinked cartoon button "tabs" allowing one to enter the hyper-dream. "Tab" buttons are mounted on a neon-blue brain console with shocking white-light "brain-spark" gifs.

I used to perform with my set list locked to the sequence of a slide projector carousel and my movements synced to a pre-recorded tape, what a drag! The "mind plasma! trip-net" addresses two important issues: random access visuals and spontaneous sound loops.

With the "trip-net control panel," each performance piece is hyperlinked to a main page, allowing random access to performance pieces to "work the crowd." (It also eliminates the buzz-kill of changing slide projector carousels in mid-performance) At a bar, music event, or any non-theatrical venue where people have limited attention spans, immediate access to material is so important.

Just as important is the spontaneous sound loops concept. Sound loops are linked to specific key frames of the presentation eliminating the need to hit exact timing cues of a pre-recorded tape. What a relief! This enables complete focus on delivery, spontaneously exadurating or speeding up a performance to connect with the audience not the tape.

Furthermore, in a presentation, you can change music faster than a DJ and still artistically "make sense." That's because people don't have to dance to the music, just experience it. It's like being in a fast-paced video game where you are constantly advancing to the next level, dropping into a new audio-visual environment to frantically deal with. It's a drama generator!

"How'd he do that?!" My custom-made microphone remote control allows me to control my computer live, triggering music and visuals while talking at the same time.

Vocal processing rack. Yamaha SPX-90 II, Alesis QuadraVerb, dbx 266 XL compressor/gate, and the Boss VF-1 vocal processor.

Roland FC-200 MIDI foot controller and Boss LS2 Line Selector Pedal.

American DJ FC-8, eight channel foot controller for all my lighting effects. The "STAR" pedal is for swirling in new gene-pools of light.

I have programmed ten custom cartoon voices in my vocal processing rack, but sounding like a space alien is not easy! Creating a distinctive character voice is only the first step. Once a character voice effect has been created, it has to be further tweaked with equalization, compression, etc. for words to be understood over music. Otherwise, vocals are just an indistinguishable cyber-garble. Creating all my vocal effects represent a weekend's worth of programming.

The Roland FC-200 foot controller (pictured above) triggers each voice through MIDI and the vocal processing that goes with it. My crazy custom voices include: a space alien, Satan, bullhorn-distortion, flanger-imagination, underwater vocal-slicer, gooshy-bubble mud pot, five-year-old little girl, robot/insectoid, and the Barry White FM DJ of love.

What is an "infinite echo-trap?" It's an effect where a "window of sound," usually a word or phrase, is trapped and repeated over-and-over again creating a chanting, trance-like effect while additional vocals are layered over top (using the same microphone).

To accomplish this effect, I run a digital delay wide-open the whole show, and use a separate foot pedal to punch sound in and out of it. This allows me to create an echo of myself, then talk over it, without creating additional echoes. It's simple once you think of it, but like Denise Richards on the reality TV show, It's Complicated! it took me two hours of brainstorming to figure it out, duh!

In my current setup (see pictures above), the Alesis QuadraVerb provides the infinite echo and the Boss LS2 Line Selector Pedal controls what sound is punched in and out of the effect. Now that my infinite echo trap is properly configured, I am very proud of it and it is a staple of my current live show, "I am in a space suit and she is dancing in ecstasy...ecstasy...ecstasy..."

Early mockup for my original multimedia show. I showed this sketch to a promoter and they said,"I see your future also includes nine people in the audience!" Despite this wise-guy comment...mission accomplished!

>> work in progress <<

Outline

Add image of trip-net.

hyper-linked image/music loops.

Rework infinite echo-trap text below.

What is an "infinite echo-trap?" It's an effect where a "window of sound," usually a word or phrase, is trapped and repeated over-and-over again creating a chanting, trance-like effect while additional audio is played over top.

I first heard the effect while seeing John Lydon (Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) playing with Public Image Ltd. in the early 80s. During an instrumental bridge, John held his microphone out to the crowd, and a girl screamed and giggled into it, "Johnny, ha-ha!" Her words echoed over and over again "Johnny, ha-ha...Johnny, ha-ha...Johnny, ha-ha..." until the instrumental bridge ended and her words were swallowed up by the dark, bass-heavy sounds of early 80s post-punk. It was like a snap shot of the girl was captured live, incorporated into the music, and then consumed by it. The effect was amazing. Public Image Ltd. had a sound-man controlling the echo, fading it out before John started singing again, but how do you accomplish this live if you are running a show by yourself?

My infinite echo-trap is a simple effect that took way longer to figure out than it should have. Why? Common sense dictates you simply set a digital delay set to 99% and use a foot pedal to turn the effect on and off. This works great for trapping the sound, but when you turn the effect off so you can talk over it, the echo also turns off, which defeats the purpose of what you are trying to accomplish in the first place, duh.

The solution is to run a digital delay wide-open the whole time, and use a separate foot pedal to punch sound in and out of it. Simple once you think of it, but like Denise Richards on that bad reality TV show, It's Complicated! it took me two hours of brainstorming to figure it out. In my current setup, the Alesis QuadraVerb provides the infinite echo and the Boss LS2 Line Selector Pedal controls when sound is punched in and out of the effect. Now that my infinite echo trap is properly configured, I am very proud of it and it is a staple of my live show.