This year Laboratory for Laptop and Electronic Audio Performance Practice (LLEAPP) took place at Edinburgh University’s Inspace. I was invited to take part in it, and I’m really glad I did come as it was an amazing experience. The Project featured workshops and performances with the group of top electronic and acoustic improvisers coming from UK, Europe and USA. It was striking to see each performer with so individual setup, custom made software, DIY and hacked hardware.
I brought combination of instruments I use for Space F!ght, RPE Duo and Freeform projects and experimented their flexiblity in large electronic ensamble environment. I was manipulating my own sound rather then other performers and found it challenging to fit aesthetically with so many electronic musicians.
On the first day we were grouped randomly and performed few sets in quartets and trios finishing with the set featuring all the musicians involved. This followed by the really interesting workshops focused on communication and collaboration in the group. These changed the way group performed, and interacted with each other. I found myself not looking at the gear while performing and visually paying more attention to the people surrounding me, which was really refreshing. This was followed by unique immersive performance of 13th people each with one speaker spread around the venue (which also affected the way we performed). I was really impressed with speed of interactions, diversity of textures and smoothness of transitions performers generated.
The whole LLEAPP experience rose my interest in site specific projects, brought few ideas for the workshops and definitely made me play more gestural structures rather then beat based patterns that I am so used to by now. I hope we can tour the project in the future and take it to really interesting places.
Participants for LLEAPP 2013:
Sean Williams
Jules Rawlinson
Lauren Hayes
Owen Green
Christos Michalakos
Emma Loyd
Adam Linson
Radek Rudnicki
Rob Canning
Frauke Aulbert
Marinos Koutsomichalis
Bill Vine
Amit Patel
Jan Hendrickse (Musical Director)
Find more info about LLEAPP on the project blog and Facebook group.
[black_button href=events] Previous Posts [/black_button]