Art in Motion is the second installment of the Hewlett Packard (HP) initiative that provides a platform to engage with examples of how computer technology can deliver an experience that fuses the art of sight, sound and touch. For anyone lucky enough to be in Sydney on Thursday 6th December, it’s a completely free event and better yet – it’ll feature a headline performance from UK dance and audiovisual heroes Coldcut, and they’ll be bringing us the next installment of their VJ spectacular.
Coldcut’s Matt Black says he’s excited by the tour, which will also see the group travelling across Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong and Shanghai. “We get to go to places we haven’t been before,” he enthuses. This follow-up to the Sound Mirrors tour that we experienced at the Parklife tour last year is labelled Journeys by VJ: the name an homage to the seminal mix CD Journeys by DJ that is still classed by many critics as one of the best we’ve ever seen. “It’s a development of our DJ ideas we’ve had for quite a while,” explains Matt, “It expands on the ideas we’ve been using – expanding sampling, processing, mixing both audio and visual material. We call it ‘New Turntablism’ and it’s a return of the turntable as a great interface to control sound and vision.”
Their show has been tweaked a little from what we last saw in Australia in 2006. “We’ve cut back on the equipment this year to make it easier to tour,” he says. “Last year it was a little bit more hardcore, although I do feel all those boxes and cases and wires and cables and electronics and gizmos are part of the show. You see these crazy motherfuckers build this crazy electronic sculpture a thousands times to do their show so I defend it on that basis!” he laughs. “But I do look forward to the day when we can operate wirelessly,” he adds with a grin.
“This tour we’ve got Virtual Vinyl and we’ve got cables and our laptops and soundcards and that’s allowed the three of us to do the entire show.” Virtual Vinyl is software, like Serato and Abelton, which allows a DJ to manipulate digital files, including video, through a traditional turntable interface.
“But we do what we do with technology – I’m not a conventional musician and I can’t really play with other instruments, but I can play with technology and that’s what we’ve been doing for 20 years.” It is this technology that Matt feels has liberated music and made DJing so popular. “One of the reasons both Jonathan and I got into DJing is the parties we went to we didn’t like the music,” he chuckles “and that led to us starting to collect records and learning how to DJ and mix ourselves.”
“I think the attraction of DJing in the first place is people want to interact with music, and people wanted to have a go at controlling music themselves and I think it’s encouraging,” he muses. “There’s been a realisation that you don’t have to just consume what’s given to you by someone else – it’s enjoyable to get in there and start mixing it up yourself. And just the enjoyment of finding you can mix two sounds together and make something new out of it is quite appealing to a lot of people.”
“I wouldn’t be a 100% evangelist for technology, in a ways it’s driving us towards destruction,” he adds philosophically. “But on the other hand there are a lot of good things that have come out of it and one of those things is allowing more people to have instruments and tools to be creative with electronics. Whether it’s Virtual Vinyl or Ableton Live or even building webpages and self-publishing. It’s really a great step forward and it’s only really happened in the last 20 years or less. A lot more people are finding they have a creative side and technology can help them realise that.”
Coldcut perform at HP’s Art in Motion at the Forum in Sydney on Dec 6th, along with DJ Numark, Pfadfinderei, Apsci, DJ Samrai and more. You can RSVP online for free entry at www.hpinteraction.com. And check them out doing their thing live in NYC…
remedy says...
i just went to this gig in Seoul.. Not to be missed i was completely awe struck with their technical ability. Took me about an hour to realise how they were doing what they were doing.