Musical Cigarettes

http://vimeo.com/22066071

This was inspired by the youtube hit “Amateur” by Lasser Gjertsen.  It is my first “prototype” (rough video edit) of the notion of mundane, everday habits as musical instruments.

While editing this I thought it would be much easier to edit “video beats” using traditional beat production methods such as using midi controllers with drum pads in conjunction with a Max/MSP/Jitter patch to trigger “samples” of video just as an MPC or MIDI controller with Logic, Ableton, etc, is used to trigger samples of sound.  It would be similar to (the unsuccessful) Serato’s Video SL extension, however instead of mixing two videos together, it would chop up one (or multiple videos), and plot them to drum pads.

However this is a rather simple and meaningless idea, and departs from my more playful and potentially thought provoking ideas of “subverting cultural norms”.

Or if I do compile a simple video drum machine, what mundane habits can I record and compile to put on a performance that brings life to them through music and re propositioning (sampling).

  • Commuting: swiping metro card, train/pedestrian ambient noises
  • cooking
  • Turning on my dj gear (but not actually any of the musical aspects of dj’ing)

If I continue this route, my first problem to tackle will be to possibly frame these mundane tasks around a specific character to give this “video” or performance some sort of subject matter.