Technological and Computer-based Projects

Drive-In Dance: an 8-channel live-processing FM radio dance collaboration
Choreographer: Liz Joynt Sandberg, think/dance collective
Work in progress
Using: Logic Pro, Max/MSP, 4 FM broadcasters


Preview audio: [20', stereo mixdown]

This location-based performance piece places the audience in their cars (carpooling to the location will be encouraged) around a circle, facing inward toward a "stage" area at the center. Each quadrant is given instructions to tune their car radios to one of the four different frequencies we're transmitting on (carefully selected to be usually "blank"), so the sonic experience will be subtly or markedly different for listeners in different cars.

The four synchronized broadcasts are stereo-encoded live by a custom-built array of FM-encoding boards, and include in their eight channels the mix of pre-recorded material coming from Logic Pro, as well as input via Max/MSP from four live instrumentalists performing at the borders between each quadrant. (Strings, brass, guitar, percussion and voice are the five sound-colors I imagine working well in this situation, and those textures all play a prominent role in the work's current form.)

As the dance progresses, the audience is instructed to operate lights on their vehicles, so that, for example, one quadrant might turn on their headlights, giving them a brightly-illuminated view of the dancers, whereas the opposite quadrant will see the dancers in silhouette. Separately, the entire circle may turn on their left turn signal, and then switch to the right turn signal, creating semi-synchronized displays of color in harmony with events in the dance.

Audio from the audience, too, can be incorporated— at some point you may be asked to honk your horn, and then the sound of that very honking could come back, in processed form, eight bars later (or eighty bars, or both).

At a later point in the dance, audience members will be invited to leave their cars, trading an enclosed, protected yet restricted viewpoint for an open, bare and direct experience for the conclusion of the work. (After the piece ends, the dance party begins.)