When I originally pitched Fragmented Realities to The Charlotte Street Foundation, it was for a two-part show: Part 1, transform the movable sonic environment of My Trip to the Kansas City Zoo into a fully immersive audio/visual experience; Part 2, create an updated tour friendly version of Analog Drift (the first collaboration between Eric and Mnemosyne) by reducing it’s duration and restricting it’s personnel to Mnemosyne and Eric. Charlotte Street agreed and we got to work.
About a month after our initial meeting, Charlotte Street asked us if we could adapt the show for a music festival (Illumaphonic). For this new version of the show, we would need to play a 40-minute set outside, in front of La Esquina. All video images would now need to be projection mapped onto the walls of the building. Excited by this idea, we replied with a strong yes. However, almost every one of our pieces was created for a non-traditional concert venue, not for an outdoor stage and a passive audience. Our solution was simple: involve the audience. First, we scrapped the zoo piece; the idea of gallery attendees wandering around a fully immersive zoo was no longer an option anyway. We replaced it with Transient Harmony. Analog Drift was luckily created for a passive audience, so we were good there. We simply had to come up with a way of streaming it, and figure out a way to cut about 25 minutes of music.
Three weeks ago, Charlotte Street reported to us that Illumaphonic had undergone some changes. These changes amounted to our performance moving back inside the gallery and being reduced from 40 minutes to 30. This means our Zoo piece is totally on again! We had already been rehearsing Transient Harmony and exploring new live streaming ideas, so it had to stay. Analog Drift had to stay as well. I had already finished our tour version, having successfully reduced the work from 45 minutes to 21, and was anxious to give it a try. Now that those decisions were made, I just had to figure out how to reduce 61 minutes of music to 30. I also had to combine three pieces that have nothing to do with each other into a cohesive sound installation, with live performance.
The following link will direct you to a portion of Analog Drift, recorded live at Epperson Auditorium at The Kansas City Arts Institute. It is from this portion that I have constructed our tour version of the piece.