The Meta-Orchestra in Maastricht / March 2004

Jan van Eyck Academy
Stichting Intro / In Situ

occupying the Klankwerkplaats of Stichting Intro 15 - 21 March
public presentation / performance from 18:00hrs Sunday 21 March
Capucijnenstraat 98 Maastricht

Yolande Harris (GB/NL) / sound and video-organ
Bert Bongers (NL) / interactivated spaces and video-organ
Hilary Jeffery (GB/NL) / tromboscillator
Cesar Villavicencio (BR/NL) / electronic contrabass recorder
Guy de Bievre / (B) electric guitar and micro-controllers
Jos Mulder / (NL) sound design and networking
Sebastian Harris (GB/ES) / set design and filming
Sebastian Menendez (AR) / graphic design and percussion
Florencia Reina (AR) / graphic design and animation
Special guest Jonathan Impett (GB) / meta-trumpet

The Meta-Orchestra presents a performance that combines electronic and acoustic sounds, video and live projections, dynamic placing of image and sound, spaces extended by sensors.
The group has worked together during the last week in a Lab / workshop environment experimenting with combining their individual materials into a collaborative result. The emphasis has been on researching the seemingly endless possibilities of collaboration through computer technologies, pushing ideas into practice and combining the natural with the technological, the acoustic with the electronic, the sonic with the visual.
The addition of a network layer between the very different individual set-ups of the group provides an apparently common ground for collaboration. A musician can control an image, several musicians can influence each other’s sounds, the gestural movements through a space can affect the placing of the sound or image in space. The orchestra has looked at how to distribute this potential in a performance, how to make visible what is happening and how to combine this layer of networked linkage to the communication layers and roles already existing in a performance group.
The informal performance presents this working setting by inviting the audience to explore the lab and its surrounding spaces whilst the Meta-Orchestra plays.