Parallel Voices, full performance as as part of Drift at the Lowry, Salford, 2019
Parallel voices is a performance for 8 vocalists and a single channel projection. In this work I recreated an 8-bit computer parallel bus in software, each bit is controlled by the amplitude of each singers voices. The different combinations of the voices produce text, colours and images. This visual information is projected behind the vocalists on a large screen.
The work was commissiond by Drift and realised as a performance at the Lowry, Salford. It was performed by the Manchester based vocal group Vocal Harum.
While developing this work I made a lot of tests with software. The video above is a compilation of some of them.
Parallel Voices, software tests, 2019
The piece was made up of 7 sections, first we introduced the bits and everyone took turns to sing into microphones which corresponded with a bit changing on the screen. As I tapped the drum pad a letter would appear. At first these were random but as the singers started to work from the score we performed the word breathe.
In the next section we produced full screen 3Bit colour with 3 singers.
000 = black
001 = blue
010 = green
011 = cyan
100 = red
101 = magenta
110 = yellow
111 = white
Then we moved through different coloured pixels sung by three people and then six people and finally produced a cloud that turned into a glitchy image.
