![]() CeC 2013
:: REPORT :: Main :: Images :: Report :: Video The 8th annual Carnival of e-Creativity (CeC 2013) was played out through February 22-23-24, 2013 (a Friday-Saturday-Sunday in springtime, as usual), in the sylvan spaces of Sattal Estate, just above Bhimtal, near Nainital, in the Lower Kumaon of the Himalayan Indian state of Uttarakhand. ~ 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 ] 2015 | 2016 |
presented by:
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:::: Post Incident Report ::::
.. and some received responses
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.. and some received responses
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Let me be completely frank here ~ Pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
And yet, it was inescapable, from the collective magic of the sorts of people who have always made up every iteration of the madness we all call The Carnival of e-Creativity, or fondly just CeC, that pretty much everything sort of went off just right nonetheless.
Most precious of all, again as always so far, everybody seemed to go home from it happy.
Here's some of just the larger 'disasters' I personally still remember the circus to have fallen victim to this time:
Our landline based broadband connection gave up the ghost almost 10 days before the incident, on account of a mysterious underground fault, provoked perhaps by a massive rainstorm at the time. And then, it remained dead right the way through CeC 2013, up until well after every participant had left. Luckily though, it must be said, we had access to a connection at the Sattal Estate office, nearby.
Shazeb got in a day later than originally intended, also on account of rain. And, to cap that, he accidentally left behind his laptop-charger, in Delhi.
My hitherto trusty ole car refused to start the morning after that same rain, and remained dead right the way through the incident,.. not least because the ancient ole village mechanic who was first brought in to attend to it raised smoke in attempting to do so; which means it eventually just had to wait till somebody found the time to fetch in an alternative mechanic from Haldwani,.. to fix both the original little problem, as well as the much larger consequences of the bumbling first-response of ye ole local mech. LoL
The second day of CeC 2013 itself began with a vicious windstorm that had many of us seeing visions of the main-venue tent in tatters, over breakfast. Heavy rain then followed on awhile, with moderate showers finally seeing through the rest of the day. It got to the point that Shazeb actually started preparing to set up our backup-venue. Some rips and drips did indeed develop in the main-tent, and the entranceway quickly came around to presenting a muddy micro-simulacrum of one of the most fondly remembered highpoints of the famous old Woodstock festival of the last millennium.
O well. All's well that ends well, as 'tis said.
And, here's a broad rundown of how it all actually went.
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Day-1, Morning Session:
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As always, the first session of the first day was given over to the usual 'closed-door' insiders meet, in which the primary-participants and some others essentially enter/ed into conspiracy to see the rest of the incident through as joint-owners of it all, towards everybody's mutual advantage.
Personal friendships that will last a lifetime were struck up; professional partnerships and collaborations that will span the globe into the future were seeded; ideas were exchanged; CeC-specific experiments were launched; the buzz was switched on.
And, when the meeting eventually dissolved, several participants joined Shazeb, my man Deepak Thapa, and myself, once again as usual, to begin set-up of the main-venue, and the adjoining screenings-room.
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Day-1, Afternoon Session:
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CeC 2013 opened to the public soon after lunch February 22, with the first session of presentations being launched in the main tent, and screenings (once again very substantially made up of the amazingly supportive injections from Wilfried Agricola de Cologne) also getting underway in the usual large room of Bishop's Cottage that we'd been using over the years, right next-door.
Whereas I have obviously sort of 'traditionally' always delivered the first public presentation of every CeC so far, that had hitherto always been essentially just about getting it up and running with a brief bit of semi-formal blabber, in my role of 'Curator', or whatever one might call it.
This time though, I tried to paint a broad picture of the continuum that had led up to where we found ourselves, over the course of almost 20 years for me, most particularly because there is firm possibility that we shall soon move on to a different new phase of it; which may very well mean that CeC 2013 will be the last of that series of incidents, giving way instead to hopefully year-round programming in the Research & Innovation Ashram (RIA #002) that I am presently working to invent in Guwahati / Assam./ Magic North East India.
And so, I went on and on about it through the full 20 minutes allotted to me (for a change, I hope), up until Kenneth Newby, as the session-Chairperson, actually rang his improvised gong to establish that enough was enough~;o).
Arun Mehta and Vickram Crishna followed on from there, speaking first about what BAPSI had been up to since last we met, which included the little matter of a $30K grant they'd recently received (from Oz, if I remember right), to carry forward a project that looks to variously empower deaf and dumb people via the 'vibrate' function of everyday mobile phones. They then also spoke of issues surrounding online privacy, and their work on that; their old games with short-range FM transmission for urban performance, and future directions intended for the various good works they both like to do, both individually as well as together.
Patricia Gruben and Martin Gotfrit then took the stage, bringing us news and progress-reports on works they variously have upon the anvil, not least amongst which be an ambitious theatre production of an original work pegged around some famous treatise of the founder of the Theosophical Society, for which production seemed to be well-progressed, including readiness of a pretty remarkable and quite beautiful set-piece that can be transmogrified to serve different functions through the course of the work, in various different ways, whilst crowned all the way through it with, apparently, a constructed elephant head.
Freeman Murray then came on, to update us all on the ongoing goings-on of his remarkable pallet-rack Jaaga art & technology space in Bangalore, as well as on progress with regard to the stunning new pallet-rack StartupSchool that he'd recently begun to set up in Cochin, in league with local government,.. and also his new girlfriend and associate, Ria Rajan. Surprisingly though—or perhaps not surprisingly, given that he has now lived in India awhile—the StartupSchool will teach yoga in addition to his good ole saws of sustainability, internet studies, and online entrepreneurship.
Jennifer Mascall took the final slot of the session, along with John McFarlane (lighting), Martin Gotfrit (guitar, and also some very flip beat-boxing) Sheela Raj (supplementary choreography and video), and, Darcy McMurray (dance). With them, her presentation smoothly segued from an overview of the Mascall Dance Company through screening of a few experimental distributed performances they'd earlier done on this India visit, together with Sheela's favourite dancer, Olive Lopez, out of Switzerland, and, on to a series of moving little cameo performances centred upon Darcy.
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Day-1, Evening Session:
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Stine Gro opened up the evening of performances, beginning with an overview of some of her various creative works and engagements thus far, as also her ongoing student-career in Denmark and Germany, before introducing us all to the brilliant little freehand projector she'd devised, to perform with lately, from an old camera lens and an LED pocket-torch. And then, perform with it she did, delivering a surreal journey through projected macro detailing, with subtle studied movement, of various little bits and pieces of forest detritus that she'd picked up from the Sattal area through the preceding days, all set against the background of a lovely piece of music she'd sequenced sometime earlier, especially just for the occasion.
Aparna Panshikar took off from there, together with Jayen Varma, launching off into some of the raagaa-based compositions that they've been developing together over the past couple of years, as the band 'Khayal Groove' (together with a French drummer/percussionist).
Kenneth Newby then stepped in, with the funky new software patch that he'd been developing especially just to work with Aparna,.. and also a cute little mbira.
And with that, we were into the first experimentally collaborative performance stream of CeC 2013!
Martin Gotfrit joined in next, with his acoustic travel-guitar, eBow, and Max patch, to be joined shortly by his twin sons, Jesse and Noah.
Noah Gotfrit took on my own son's beautiful old Westbury bass, in line with his current study of jazz-bass composition, in Vancouver,.. where my son Bacchus has just coincidentally been living ever since he left me the bass, to begin with.
Jesse Gotfrit surprised at least a few of us by joining in too, with gravely solemn and quite excellent recitation of some of his own lovely poetry, in staggered sync with the music.
And then (may the lord forgive me~;o), as Aparna left the stage, even I joined the mix, with my own little electric travel-guitar, eBow, and effects box.
By then, everything was obviously crackling. But, as Jayen extemporaneously progressed up to the slapping speed he is renowned for on his bass-guitar, first I, and then all of the rest, eventually bit the dust.
And, perfect timing about it too, for the evening was by now well done, and there was a lovely dinner awaiting us all, to close that magic first day.
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Day-2, Start-up:
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It's probably a bit of a lucky thing that we'd all collectively taken a decision, in the course of the insiders-meet of the first morning, to start the two public morning sessions of the following days a bit later than we had hitherto done through every CeC thus far.
For, what turned up at breakfast that morning, skulking in from the south over olde Hadimba hill, was, first a boisterous and blustery wind that whipped trees around like they were broomsticks, and then, a dense and heavy rain,.. with a very brief pause in between the two punctuated by an incredible pistachio-green cloud of pollen puffing high up into the air, from some undoubtedly massive tree down in the Sattal valley.
Weather forecasts, like true messengers, for a change, of the very weather gods themselves, had been predicting a strong likelihood of rain through Days 2 & 3 of CeC 2013 for almost 10 days.
And, all that we had been able to do about that was to just repeatedly put the plea to our tent-man, KD, that five years of our paying him about half the actual value of his tent as just rental for it over the 3 days of each CeC that he'd handled for us so far, was finally now coming down to these 2 days.
It had to hold up.
In turn, all that KD could do was to repeatedly reassure us that he was taking extra special steps this time to make sure that the tent would indeed hold up to rain,… but, whether it would hold up to wind or not was entirely up to the gods.
Awk! That wind that morning!!
I was seeing quite clear visions of the tent in long fluttering tatters as folks straggled in for breakfast at Roshnara Cottage, which had been set up as the insiders' mess, as usual.
Shazeb Shaikh, as Core-Co-Curator, was obviously seeing pretty similar visions at the same time too. For, whereas I chose to play sort of stoic, since there was really nothing very much we could do till the rain slowed down, he was already rushing about to try and make sure we'd be ready to quickly shift everything and everybody to the back-up venue, if necessary. Not that there was anything very much we could really do about that either, up until the rain slowed down. LoL
Slow down it did though, just in time for us to be able to walk down to the tent right on time for set-up. But of course, it never actually stopped right through the rest of the day.
The tent was a bit of a mess, but it had held, and not really let any rain in,.. other than a fulsome spill into the little entrance-corridor that extended a bit out of the tent, as a sort of light-trap to help keep things dark inside, for projection. And that naturally became a merry mess soon enough.
Meanwhile, the mainline electricity supply was blown, and would eventually remain so till late evening. But, all we had to go upon till then was our own personal experiences of living in the mountains, which had taught us that when the electricity supply did go out, as it often did, it could be gone for hours,.. or days.
Backup had been migrated the year before, from the crummy generator we used to rent earlier, to batteries and an uninterruptible UPS-invertor of our own. And, we'd similarly also rationalized lighting, PA, and projection for the stage, so as to be able hold out for an entire edition of CeC,.. we hoped.
But there was no easy escape from the given situation, if we were not to gamble upon possibly leaving everybody high and 'dry', which obliged Shazeb and me to take the hard decision to invoke 'force majeur' so as to shut down the independent screenings-segment of short-creative-videoworks, for the day. A real tragedy, yes, since that meant quite a few videos from our incredible listings would not be screened at all during the incident. But, matters could certainly have been far worse, and we did pass word around that anybody who wished to do so was very welcome to view any of the DVDs on their own laptops at any time through the day.
And so to the main program.
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Day-2, Morning Session:
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Ameet Singh came on first, gently delighting us all with his unique focus, as an artist, upon some of the sorts of relatively 'inert' spaces and faces that inescapably make up so much of all architecture, such as corners, upper walls, and so on. For, being a practicing architect at the same time as he was a practicing artist, his approach to addressing such spaces was subtle and extraordinary, using projection to unobtrusively almost just imply coloured shapes and shadows, that sometime changed, sometimes did not; sometimes moved, sometimes did not. And, he actually went on to establish such an installation later in the course of CeC 2013, within our screenings cottage.
Sohan Modak followed that with a masterful briefing on his method to decode genetics as a clearly structured language, that could probably speak to almost anybody who might be willing to learn it, possibly even without their learning too much of the heavier science stuff alongside.
Kenneth Newby's presentation was the last of the morning, and, he's never been known to slow down the pace on any such shenanigans. And so, although the analog musical instrument he'd chosen to bring along this visit was a simple mbira, he was soon spinning out some of the weird and wonderful patterns, of logic, of frequencies, of aesthetics, and what not, that he'd been programming lately, to have us all understand a bit about how he'd been getting his computer to sort of autonomously compose and perform orchestral pieces far more beautiful than any that at least I have ever heard to emerge autonomously from anybody else's computer.
And, that was that for the morning, with the rain still pattering down, and a pasta so excellent awaiting us all for lunch, that one young fellow was later said to have sort of exploded at both ends awhile, from having gobbled down a tad too much of it for his own good. LoL
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Day-2, Afternoon Session:
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Jennifer Mascall led the first presentation of this session, accompanied by Darcy McMurray (lead dancer), Raakesh MPS (second lead), Shalon (supporting), John McFarlane (lights), and, Martin Gotfrit (guitar, plus some very funky 'beat-boxing'). What they all together interspersed Jennifer's talk with was a series of very brief cameos, each studiedly aimed, as a one-off, towards presenting essentially just a single lasting primary image, and thereby a specific communication, observation, or comment, with dance. And, whereas some of it might have been a bit tough to comprehend fully, not least because of the counterintuitive idea of viewing movement as stills, there was a piece in there so powerful nonetheless, that Darcy was actually requested by several people to repeat it.
Gilles Aubry, coming after this, could be said to be also drawing images with his work, but with his work being almost entirely spun from just sound. Serving a Fellowship of the Pro Helvetia Arts Council of Switzerland, in Mumbai at the time, what he had been up to lately was audio-recording all sorts of situations in that city, so as to eventually sort of draw audio 'portraits' with these materials later on. A bit sadly though, whereas he did play back some of the raw recordings, he did not share any finished work,.. if I remember right.
Gene Kogan perhaps came through a bit hardcore after all of this, for some, running us all as he did, through a rapid overview of some of his past and present works, that variously deploy anything and everything through from hard-coding to a funky bit of hardware that he'd been beta-testing for several weeks before it's commercial launch, by writing programs and patches to be used with it, mainly for music, whilst serving a fellowship-residency of some sort in Bengaluru.
Shazeb Shaikh closed the afternoon, presenting a remarkable range of multiple media works that he has done in the past, and also a couple that he's working on presently. His ongoing close association with CeC and The AeA also found prominent mention along the way, with him sharing several of his ideas and concerns on the way forward with these entities.
And, he'd shown excellent timing with his presentation, having made up the whole schedule himself, since there was all of the tea break to further discuss anything he had brought up, with whosoever might have been interested to know more,… if only he could find some free time from running the entire circus.
Which was just not going to happen that evening, since there was a whole string of pretty complex set-ups to be put in place for the evening's performances. LoL
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Day-2, Evening Session:
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Given how simple we prefer to keep everything through every CeC, set-up was a bit complicated this evening, not least because audio was essentially my charge, and I'm actually pretty much an amateur with regard to such things. Also, we needed to set up for four quite different, and quite separate, performances.
Hemant Sreekumar, to begin with, wanted to be set up offstage, in pretty much what would otherwise be the first three rows for audience, with two tables, to hold his two laptops (audio+video), a projector, and his midi-controller. But, we forgave him that, because we knew, from his performance of the year before, that he'd probably deliver an extraordinary live jamboree, that would absolutely mystify many amongst us, whilst at the same time also thrilling at least some of the more radically progressive musicians, video-performers, and coders amongst us. And, sure enough, with acknowledgements for the assistance of his cat once again, that boy, he sure did deliver.
Lionel Dentan, accompanied for the first time in CeC by his wife Namrata Pamnani, was set up with a single table stage-right, which he soon had bristling with a rat's nest of wires running through the unique phalanx of custom-made analogue hardware that he's increasingly been using in his electronic performances (no computer). And to that, for Namrata this time, he added a wireless microphone rig for her to voice complex tabla taals and sundry bols, as well as some sort of deck-microphone, with which to pick up her footsteps and stamped-beats off the stage. All to the good I say too, for the lovely young couple then launched into an authoritative performance of music and dance, respectively, with Lionel's precision handling of a formidable arsenal of sounds mated perfectly with Namrata's occasional vocals, and elegantly minimalist 'dance'.
Vinny Bhagat and Ashhar Farooqui had their two tables set up stage-left, as the perfect act to follow what was obviously a tough act to follow. Vinny was taking his usual bare-knuckles approach to the performance, with one laptop for improvisational live signal-synthesis, processing, and sequencing, to deliver sound, and, a second laptop for improvisational live sequencing and processing of a stock of unedited raw video he'd shot over some time, of the Yamuna river. Meanwhile, Ashhar was set up with a single laptop, running carefully crafted patches and samples in Live and PD, along with a couple of controllers, his usual voice-mic, and a few other geegaws,.. with colourful lights. And, what they performed together was an extraordinary compendium of observations and commentary, upon that doomed river; the Yamuna.
Puneet Bhatt joined them right after the extended Yamuna piece, along with his trusty ole guitar, to introduce a bit of what's been happening with regard to innovation and traditional music locally, in the Sattal/Kumaon region. First, he sang an old song, and then a couple of his own original composition, juggling tight guitar work with new twists and turns to old traditional rhythms and scales, subtly intertwined with new global influences. Meanwhile, Ashhar and Vinny jockeyed in and out of the background soundscape with pure audio synthesis and sequencing.
That was the first proper local participation CeC was seeing through 5 years up in Sattal. And, Puneet certainly wasn't going to leave it at just that, having also brought in a few local musicians from amongst his friends.
Pankaj Bhakuni sang an original composition of his own, as well as a traditional piece, excellently hallmarking new directions being taken with local tradition. Although Puneet and he had lately been working together quite a bit on their music, this was unlike Puneet's independent work, coming as it did from much deeper in the mountains. But, in common with each other, their newer compositions seemed to come through a bit easier on the ear, than the music of pure traition, to people not used to it all.
Bir Ram, Chandan Singh Bora, and Bhuwan Ram, followed on, performing pure local tradition, with, first an authoritatively vocalized invocation of some sort, and then, a brief group jaagar ('brief' because it would normally be an all-night affair), all mixed together with live local drum, and also that distinctively clattering local percussion, of sticks upon a steel dinner-plate.
And, Darcy McMurray jigged, and jerked, and swayed, and twisted, and twirled to it all, altogether dancing a startlingly apt performance for the whole raucous exuberance of it all.
Electricity was back by now; the rain was done; the day, nearly so, and; there was dinner.
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Day-3, Start-up:
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Here came another exciting disaster to get the blood flowing robustly through the veins of at least Shazeb and I.
Click. Click-click. Click, click. Clickclickclickclick. Nothing
Power checked, wires checked. Click. Click-click. Nothing
I shook it, slapped it, turned it this way and that. Click. Clickclickclick. Nothing
The PA system wouldn't come on!
Good people pitched in to lend a hand; poking fingers here and there; asking whether we'd tried doing this, or that, or the other,.. for the fifth time. Shazeb frantically got a couple of musicians to check out whether any of their mixers might be able to deliver enough juice to power the speakers. Deepak was despatched to fetch in the back-up powered-speaker that Lionel Dentan had so kindly gifted to the party a year earlier.
And then, all of a sudden, sitting almost forlorn upon the floor, the PA-system gave us that beloved green light!
Apparently, what had happened was that the electricity-supply voltage had been below the threshold for the PA system to switch on, and at the same time, above the threshold for our power backup to take over.
Put me down as having paid for that lesson of a lifetime with say,.. um, 2 heart attacks.
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Day-3, Morning Session:
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Ashhar Farooqui and Vinny Bhagat opened the morning of the final day, to first explain a bit about what the hey their performance of the previous evening had been all about, which, it seems came specifically right down to contributing towards hopefully turning around the Fates, on the doomed holy river Yamuna (at Delhi in particular; it's deepest wilful bruise). They also spoke of their Liveroom initiative, which had been steadily streaming live, and sometimes globally distributive, performances almost every weekend since CeC last year. And of course, there was word too of Sin;drome, the new identity under which they were performing experimental new works,.. and, also Ashhar's lovely new set-up, 50kms further into the mountains, into which he welcomed musicians and other experimental creative practitioners, to serve fellowship residencies.
Puneet Bhatt too expanded upon his performance of the previous evening, but also took the opportunity to introduce some of the documentary work he'd lately been doing on local music, creativity and innovation, as most eloquently represented via a short video-documentary he'd made, on a community of men who climb up into high jungles ever summer, to establish temporary camps and temporary wood-lathes, run off stream water-flows, upon which they turned traditional food vessels out of the preceding winters' fallen hardwoods, of specific exotic trees. (Phew! Long sentence, huh?~:o)
Friedrich Glorian was back with us after a year's gap, and there was much he had been up to through the interregnum; ranged from his always-ongoing performances, workshops, and commissioned work, through his equally always-ongoing experimentation with new instruments, new sounds, new processes, new paradigms. And, in a sort of peculiar continuum to his having brought in a full-tilt guzheng almost as large as himself, for CeC 2011, this time, what he'd brought along, in addition to his usual wireframe main-instrument, and his various electronics, was a most peculiar overtone flute that stood taller than himself. And he played the heck out of it too. LoL.
Sheela Raj then began to manifest another new continuum for Friedrich to eventually be drawn into, soon enough, with her heArtLight Collective, out in the open, behind the tent. Vinny Bhagat was providing sound synthesis off his laptop. Paul Schneiter was banging beats out of the shell of a dried half-pumpkin, all the way from Africa,.. just like the little mbira was plucking away, to glory.
Darcy McMurray was lead-dancer once again, with Raakesh MPS, also once again, as they had been for Jennifer Mascall, Day-2. But this time, out in open space, they drew others too into what thereby gradually became almost some sort of pagan power-dance, with people swaying about, pirouetting, swinging in tandem, some adding all sorts of vocalizations to the music of Vinny and Paul.
Raakesh MPS, if I remember right, was the one who started the migration back into the tent, and onto stage, twisting his body as he went along, into separate little vignettes, eventually tracing them against a reactively morphing fractal tree, projected onto the backdrop screen, by Kenneth Newby.
Darcy too was back on stage soon enough, intertwining herself in and out of Raakesh's contortions, before both finally tumbled and crawled off the stage, as though to mark lunchtime.
And, Sheela Gee jumped about the whole while, extemporaneously directing it all, all the way, in her inimitable style, whilst Freidrich Glorian gently took over building the soundscape with his extraordinary live processing of his extraordinary live instruments, from Vinny and Paul, as everybody trickled back in after the dancers.
So, what was for lunch anyway? Um, I really don't remember.
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Day-3, Afternoon Session:
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Petra Rehwald launched the afternoon, after a lot of fretful backing and forthing through the morning, in regard to whether the tonality and tuning of her lovely hackbrett could hold up to the moisture still in the air from the rains of the day before. She'd eventually decided to live dangerously, and pulled out the big fella on stage, to be accompanied by Paul and his African half-pumpkin shell. And, she then interspersed her lovely performance with anecdotes from her other collaborations, with many another musician, of many a different sort, across much of India, and the world.
Diya Sarker then slipped in, in her inimitably gentle and shy way, sitting unobtrusively upon a corner of the stage, as though she were just filling in a gap, as she spoke and projected images onto the main screen, whilst the next lot set up their rigs almost right on top of her head. In much the same quiet way, the experimentally creative injection into CeC 2013 that she was leading us through with her images, had apparently been going on all along, without almost anyone else knowing of it, right on the periphery of things, where she'd been setting up unusual little sketches, in unusual little settings, with folded paper animals and shapes, that altogether coalesced fleetingly into seemingly casual images, that were actually sometimes eerily evocative of a virtual reality that they certainly were not,.. in the normal sense of such term.
Gene Kogan and Sharath Chandra were that next lot to come on, having set up a complex collaborative rig that ranged from the lovely little gestural controller that Gene had been beta-testing, and writing software for, through to all sorts of little gadgets that Sharath seemed to have pulled out of a mad hat, and committed brutal surgery upon in some instances. In performance, if I correctly understand what was going on, the way it went was that Sharath was generating waves of experimental sound synthesis, that was hopped over to Gene, at the adjoining table, who was processing it alongside some sound synthesis of his own, whilst at the same time driving a smooth flow of generative visual art off to the projector.
Tritha Sinha and her Space crew, Ritika Singh and Paul Schneiter, took over from there, with Friedrich Glorian invited aboard for an experimental collaboration at the end of their set. First came a bit of a voyage through some of the genres of work that Tritha has variously been doing; some that she'd been working on with Space, and; some that she'd been working on with others. Sometimes in Kolkata; sometimes in Paris, and; oftentimes in other countries, other cities. And, the whole of it was delivered as an intertwining of live songs, recorded videos, soaring thoughts, and wild fantasies.
Good stuff to be scoffed before evening tea, almost any day.
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Day-3, Evening Session:
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Here at last was that Experimental Ecstasy slot that had become such an important part of every CeC thus far,.. barring just CeC 2012, when we all lost precious time one day to a late pasta for lunch. Shazeb had made sure to have it fall perfectly into place this time, with the entire last slot of the incident actually given over entirely to experimental collaborations.
Ashhar and Vinny were on for the whammy, set up stage-left to deliver audio and video. Friedrich was set up stage-right to deliver just audio, with Tritha seated at a mic beside him. Stine Gro was hunched over down-right, with her flip little macro-projector, girdled up to do battle with the main projector this time. Paul popped in and out of the picture with his pumpkin half-shell. Freeman Murray took the stage awhile along the way, to contribute what seemed to me to be a Himalayan Buddhist chant, or drone.
Even I managed to squeeze in a few whines and moans with my trusty little guitar and eBow, which was then picked up for a bit by Kenneth, and also the Delhi-based metal guitarist Saurabh Babbar, who just happened to be amongst us. But,, both of them kept the volume low, leaving me sometimes guessing at what they were upto.
But then, silly ole man, there was much else I missed, or just don't remember, too.
~.~
With deep gratitude to the good people who variously made up CeC 2013, by either their presentations, and/or their performances, their external contributions to content, or just their wonderfully supportive presence.
Shankar Barua
April 19, 2013
Guwahati, Assam, India
And yet, it was inescapable, from the collective magic of the sorts of people who have always made up every iteration of the madness we all call The Carnival of e-Creativity, or fondly just CeC, that pretty much everything sort of went off just right nonetheless.
Most precious of all, again as always so far, everybody seemed to go home from it happy.
Here's some of just the larger 'disasters' I personally still remember the circus to have fallen victim to this time:
Our landline based broadband connection gave up the ghost almost 10 days before the incident, on account of a mysterious underground fault, provoked perhaps by a massive rainstorm at the time. And then, it remained dead right the way through CeC 2013, up until well after every participant had left. Luckily though, it must be said, we had access to a connection at the Sattal Estate office, nearby.
Shazeb got in a day later than originally intended, also on account of rain. And, to cap that, he accidentally left behind his laptop-charger, in Delhi.
My hitherto trusty ole car refused to start the morning after that same rain, and remained dead right the way through the incident,.. not least because the ancient ole village mechanic who was first brought in to attend to it raised smoke in attempting to do so; which means it eventually just had to wait till somebody found the time to fetch in an alternative mechanic from Haldwani,.. to fix both the original little problem, as well as the much larger consequences of the bumbling first-response of ye ole local mech. LoL
The second day of CeC 2013 itself began with a vicious windstorm that had many of us seeing visions of the main-venue tent in tatters, over breakfast. Heavy rain then followed on awhile, with moderate showers finally seeing through the rest of the day. It got to the point that Shazeb actually started preparing to set up our backup-venue. Some rips and drips did indeed develop in the main-tent, and the entranceway quickly came around to presenting a muddy micro-simulacrum of one of the most fondly remembered highpoints of the famous old Woodstock festival of the last millennium.
O well. All's well that ends well, as 'tis said.
And, here's a broad rundown of how it all actually went.
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Day-1, Morning Session:
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As always, the first session of the first day was given over to the usual 'closed-door' insiders meet, in which the primary-participants and some others essentially enter/ed into conspiracy to see the rest of the incident through as joint-owners of it all, towards everybody's mutual advantage.
Personal friendships that will last a lifetime were struck up; professional partnerships and collaborations that will span the globe into the future were seeded; ideas were exchanged; CeC-specific experiments were launched; the buzz was switched on.
And, when the meeting eventually dissolved, several participants joined Shazeb, my man Deepak Thapa, and myself, once again as usual, to begin set-up of the main-venue, and the adjoining screenings-room.
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Day-1, Afternoon Session:
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CeC 2013 opened to the public soon after lunch February 22, with the first session of presentations being launched in the main tent, and screenings (once again very substantially made up of the amazingly supportive injections from Wilfried Agricola de Cologne) also getting underway in the usual large room of Bishop's Cottage that we'd been using over the years, right next-door.
Whereas I have obviously sort of 'traditionally' always delivered the first public presentation of every CeC so far, that had hitherto always been essentially just about getting it up and running with a brief bit of semi-formal blabber, in my role of 'Curator', or whatever one might call it.
This time though, I tried to paint a broad picture of the continuum that had led up to where we found ourselves, over the course of almost 20 years for me, most particularly because there is firm possibility that we shall soon move on to a different new phase of it; which may very well mean that CeC 2013 will be the last of that series of incidents, giving way instead to hopefully year-round programming in the Research & Innovation Ashram (RIA #002) that I am presently working to invent in Guwahati / Assam./ Magic North East India.
And so, I went on and on about it through the full 20 minutes allotted to me (for a change, I hope), up until Kenneth Newby, as the session-Chairperson, actually rang his improvised gong to establish that enough was enough~;o).
Arun Mehta and Vickram Crishna followed on from there, speaking first about what BAPSI had been up to since last we met, which included the little matter of a $30K grant they'd recently received (from Oz, if I remember right), to carry forward a project that looks to variously empower deaf and dumb people via the 'vibrate' function of everyday mobile phones. They then also spoke of issues surrounding online privacy, and their work on that; their old games with short-range FM transmission for urban performance, and future directions intended for the various good works they both like to do, both individually as well as together.
Patricia Gruben and Martin Gotfrit then took the stage, bringing us news and progress-reports on works they variously have upon the anvil, not least amongst which be an ambitious theatre production of an original work pegged around some famous treatise of the founder of the Theosophical Society, for which production seemed to be well-progressed, including readiness of a pretty remarkable and quite beautiful set-piece that can be transmogrified to serve different functions through the course of the work, in various different ways, whilst crowned all the way through it with, apparently, a constructed elephant head.
Freeman Murray then came on, to update us all on the ongoing goings-on of his remarkable pallet-rack Jaaga art & technology space in Bangalore, as well as on progress with regard to the stunning new pallet-rack StartupSchool that he'd recently begun to set up in Cochin, in league with local government,.. and also his new girlfriend and associate, Ria Rajan. Surprisingly though—or perhaps not surprisingly, given that he has now lived in India awhile—the StartupSchool will teach yoga in addition to his good ole saws of sustainability, internet studies, and online entrepreneurship.
Jennifer Mascall took the final slot of the session, along with John McFarlane (lighting), Martin Gotfrit (guitar, and also some very flip beat-boxing) Sheela Raj (supplementary choreography and video), and, Darcy McMurray (dance). With them, her presentation smoothly segued from an overview of the Mascall Dance Company through screening of a few experimental distributed performances they'd earlier done on this India visit, together with Sheela's favourite dancer, Olive Lopez, out of Switzerland, and, on to a series of moving little cameo performances centred upon Darcy.
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Day-1, Evening Session:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stine Gro opened up the evening of performances, beginning with an overview of some of her various creative works and engagements thus far, as also her ongoing student-career in Denmark and Germany, before introducing us all to the brilliant little freehand projector she'd devised, to perform with lately, from an old camera lens and an LED pocket-torch. And then, perform with it she did, delivering a surreal journey through projected macro detailing, with subtle studied movement, of various little bits and pieces of forest detritus that she'd picked up from the Sattal area through the preceding days, all set against the background of a lovely piece of music she'd sequenced sometime earlier, especially just for the occasion.
Aparna Panshikar took off from there, together with Jayen Varma, launching off into some of the raagaa-based compositions that they've been developing together over the past couple of years, as the band 'Khayal Groove' (together with a French drummer/percussionist).
Kenneth Newby then stepped in, with the funky new software patch that he'd been developing especially just to work with Aparna,.. and also a cute little mbira.
And with that, we were into the first experimentally collaborative performance stream of CeC 2013!
Martin Gotfrit joined in next, with his acoustic travel-guitar, eBow, and Max patch, to be joined shortly by his twin sons, Jesse and Noah.
Noah Gotfrit took on my own son's beautiful old Westbury bass, in line with his current study of jazz-bass composition, in Vancouver,.. where my son Bacchus has just coincidentally been living ever since he left me the bass, to begin with.
Jesse Gotfrit surprised at least a few of us by joining in too, with gravely solemn and quite excellent recitation of some of his own lovely poetry, in staggered sync with the music.
And then (may the lord forgive me~;o), as Aparna left the stage, even I joined the mix, with my own little electric travel-guitar, eBow, and effects box.
By then, everything was obviously crackling. But, as Jayen extemporaneously progressed up to the slapping speed he is renowned for on his bass-guitar, first I, and then all of the rest, eventually bit the dust.
And, perfect timing about it too, for the evening was by now well done, and there was a lovely dinner awaiting us all, to close that magic first day.
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Day-2, Start-up:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's probably a bit of a lucky thing that we'd all collectively taken a decision, in the course of the insiders-meet of the first morning, to start the two public morning sessions of the following days a bit later than we had hitherto done through every CeC thus far.
For, what turned up at breakfast that morning, skulking in from the south over olde Hadimba hill, was, first a boisterous and blustery wind that whipped trees around like they were broomsticks, and then, a dense and heavy rain,.. with a very brief pause in between the two punctuated by an incredible pistachio-green cloud of pollen puffing high up into the air, from some undoubtedly massive tree down in the Sattal valley.
Weather forecasts, like true messengers, for a change, of the very weather gods themselves, had been predicting a strong likelihood of rain through Days 2 & 3 of CeC 2013 for almost 10 days.
And, all that we had been able to do about that was to just repeatedly put the plea to our tent-man, KD, that five years of our paying him about half the actual value of his tent as just rental for it over the 3 days of each CeC that he'd handled for us so far, was finally now coming down to these 2 days.
It had to hold up.
In turn, all that KD could do was to repeatedly reassure us that he was taking extra special steps this time to make sure that the tent would indeed hold up to rain,… but, whether it would hold up to wind or not was entirely up to the gods.
Awk! That wind that morning!!
I was seeing quite clear visions of the tent in long fluttering tatters as folks straggled in for breakfast at Roshnara Cottage, which had been set up as the insiders' mess, as usual.
Shazeb Shaikh, as Core-Co-Curator, was obviously seeing pretty similar visions at the same time too. For, whereas I chose to play sort of stoic, since there was really nothing very much we could do till the rain slowed down, he was already rushing about to try and make sure we'd be ready to quickly shift everything and everybody to the back-up venue, if necessary. Not that there was anything very much we could really do about that either, up until the rain slowed down. LoL
Slow down it did though, just in time for us to be able to walk down to the tent right on time for set-up. But of course, it never actually stopped right through the rest of the day.
The tent was a bit of a mess, but it had held, and not really let any rain in,.. other than a fulsome spill into the little entrance-corridor that extended a bit out of the tent, as a sort of light-trap to help keep things dark inside, for projection. And that naturally became a merry mess soon enough.
Meanwhile, the mainline electricity supply was blown, and would eventually remain so till late evening. But, all we had to go upon till then was our own personal experiences of living in the mountains, which had taught us that when the electricity supply did go out, as it often did, it could be gone for hours,.. or days.
Backup had been migrated the year before, from the crummy generator we used to rent earlier, to batteries and an uninterruptible UPS-invertor of our own. And, we'd similarly also rationalized lighting, PA, and projection for the stage, so as to be able hold out for an entire edition of CeC,.. we hoped.
But there was no easy escape from the given situation, if we were not to gamble upon possibly leaving everybody high and 'dry', which obliged Shazeb and me to take the hard decision to invoke 'force majeur' so as to shut down the independent screenings-segment of short-creative-videoworks, for the day. A real tragedy, yes, since that meant quite a few videos from our incredible listings would not be screened at all during the incident. But, matters could certainly have been far worse, and we did pass word around that anybody who wished to do so was very welcome to view any of the DVDs on their own laptops at any time through the day.
And so to the main program.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Day-2, Morning Session:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ameet Singh came on first, gently delighting us all with his unique focus, as an artist, upon some of the sorts of relatively 'inert' spaces and faces that inescapably make up so much of all architecture, such as corners, upper walls, and so on. For, being a practicing architect at the same time as he was a practicing artist, his approach to addressing such spaces was subtle and extraordinary, using projection to unobtrusively almost just imply coloured shapes and shadows, that sometime changed, sometimes did not; sometimes moved, sometimes did not. And, he actually went on to establish such an installation later in the course of CeC 2013, within our screenings cottage.
Sohan Modak followed that with a masterful briefing on his method to decode genetics as a clearly structured language, that could probably speak to almost anybody who might be willing to learn it, possibly even without their learning too much of the heavier science stuff alongside.
Kenneth Newby's presentation was the last of the morning, and, he's never been known to slow down the pace on any such shenanigans. And so, although the analog musical instrument he'd chosen to bring along this visit was a simple mbira, he was soon spinning out some of the weird and wonderful patterns, of logic, of frequencies, of aesthetics, and what not, that he'd been programming lately, to have us all understand a bit about how he'd been getting his computer to sort of autonomously compose and perform orchestral pieces far more beautiful than any that at least I have ever heard to emerge autonomously from anybody else's computer.
And, that was that for the morning, with the rain still pattering down, and a pasta so excellent awaiting us all for lunch, that one young fellow was later said to have sort of exploded at both ends awhile, from having gobbled down a tad too much of it for his own good. LoL
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Day-2, Afternoon Session:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jennifer Mascall led the first presentation of this session, accompanied by Darcy McMurray (lead dancer), Raakesh MPS (second lead), Shalon (supporting), John McFarlane (lights), and, Martin Gotfrit (guitar, plus some very funky 'beat-boxing'). What they all together interspersed Jennifer's talk with was a series of very brief cameos, each studiedly aimed, as a one-off, towards presenting essentially just a single lasting primary image, and thereby a specific communication, observation, or comment, with dance. And, whereas some of it might have been a bit tough to comprehend fully, not least because of the counterintuitive idea of viewing movement as stills, there was a piece in there so powerful nonetheless, that Darcy was actually requested by several people to repeat it.
Gilles Aubry, coming after this, could be said to be also drawing images with his work, but with his work being almost entirely spun from just sound. Serving a Fellowship of the Pro Helvetia Arts Council of Switzerland, in Mumbai at the time, what he had been up to lately was audio-recording all sorts of situations in that city, so as to eventually sort of draw audio 'portraits' with these materials later on. A bit sadly though, whereas he did play back some of the raw recordings, he did not share any finished work,.. if I remember right.
Gene Kogan perhaps came through a bit hardcore after all of this, for some, running us all as he did, through a rapid overview of some of his past and present works, that variously deploy anything and everything through from hard-coding to a funky bit of hardware that he'd been beta-testing for several weeks before it's commercial launch, by writing programs and patches to be used with it, mainly for music, whilst serving a fellowship-residency of some sort in Bengaluru.
Shazeb Shaikh closed the afternoon, presenting a remarkable range of multiple media works that he has done in the past, and also a couple that he's working on presently. His ongoing close association with CeC and The AeA also found prominent mention along the way, with him sharing several of his ideas and concerns on the way forward with these entities.
And, he'd shown excellent timing with his presentation, having made up the whole schedule himself, since there was all of the tea break to further discuss anything he had brought up, with whosoever might have been interested to know more,… if only he could find some free time from running the entire circus.
Which was just not going to happen that evening, since there was a whole string of pretty complex set-ups to be put in place for the evening's performances. LoL
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Day-2, Evening Session:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Given how simple we prefer to keep everything through every CeC, set-up was a bit complicated this evening, not least because audio was essentially my charge, and I'm actually pretty much an amateur with regard to such things. Also, we needed to set up for four quite different, and quite separate, performances.
Hemant Sreekumar, to begin with, wanted to be set up offstage, in pretty much what would otherwise be the first three rows for audience, with two tables, to hold his two laptops (audio+video), a projector, and his midi-controller. But, we forgave him that, because we knew, from his performance of the year before, that he'd probably deliver an extraordinary live jamboree, that would absolutely mystify many amongst us, whilst at the same time also thrilling at least some of the more radically progressive musicians, video-performers, and coders amongst us. And, sure enough, with acknowledgements for the assistance of his cat once again, that boy, he sure did deliver.
Lionel Dentan, accompanied for the first time in CeC by his wife Namrata Pamnani, was set up with a single table stage-right, which he soon had bristling with a rat's nest of wires running through the unique phalanx of custom-made analogue hardware that he's increasingly been using in his electronic performances (no computer). And to that, for Namrata this time, he added a wireless microphone rig for her to voice complex tabla taals and sundry bols, as well as some sort of deck-microphone, with which to pick up her footsteps and stamped-beats off the stage. All to the good I say too, for the lovely young couple then launched into an authoritative performance of music and dance, respectively, with Lionel's precision handling of a formidable arsenal of sounds mated perfectly with Namrata's occasional vocals, and elegantly minimalist 'dance'.
Vinny Bhagat and Ashhar Farooqui had their two tables set up stage-left, as the perfect act to follow what was obviously a tough act to follow. Vinny was taking his usual bare-knuckles approach to the performance, with one laptop for improvisational live signal-synthesis, processing, and sequencing, to deliver sound, and, a second laptop for improvisational live sequencing and processing of a stock of unedited raw video he'd shot over some time, of the Yamuna river. Meanwhile, Ashhar was set up with a single laptop, running carefully crafted patches and samples in Live and PD, along with a couple of controllers, his usual voice-mic, and a few other geegaws,.. with colourful lights. And, what they performed together was an extraordinary compendium of observations and commentary, upon that doomed river; the Yamuna.
Puneet Bhatt joined them right after the extended Yamuna piece, along with his trusty ole guitar, to introduce a bit of what's been happening with regard to innovation and traditional music locally, in the Sattal/Kumaon region. First, he sang an old song, and then a couple of his own original composition, juggling tight guitar work with new twists and turns to old traditional rhythms and scales, subtly intertwined with new global influences. Meanwhile, Ashhar and Vinny jockeyed in and out of the background soundscape with pure audio synthesis and sequencing.
That was the first proper local participation CeC was seeing through 5 years up in Sattal. And, Puneet certainly wasn't going to leave it at just that, having also brought in a few local musicians from amongst his friends.
Pankaj Bhakuni sang an original composition of his own, as well as a traditional piece, excellently hallmarking new directions being taken with local tradition. Although Puneet and he had lately been working together quite a bit on their music, this was unlike Puneet's independent work, coming as it did from much deeper in the mountains. But, in common with each other, their newer compositions seemed to come through a bit easier on the ear, than the music of pure traition, to people not used to it all.
Bir Ram, Chandan Singh Bora, and Bhuwan Ram, followed on, performing pure local tradition, with, first an authoritatively vocalized invocation of some sort, and then, a brief group jaagar ('brief' because it would normally be an all-night affair), all mixed together with live local drum, and also that distinctively clattering local percussion, of sticks upon a steel dinner-plate.
And, Darcy McMurray jigged, and jerked, and swayed, and twisted, and twirled to it all, altogether dancing a startlingly apt performance for the whole raucous exuberance of it all.
Electricity was back by now; the rain was done; the day, nearly so, and; there was dinner.
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Day-3, Start-up:
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Here came another exciting disaster to get the blood flowing robustly through the veins of at least Shazeb and I.
Click. Click-click. Click, click. Clickclickclickclick. Nothing
Power checked, wires checked. Click. Click-click. Nothing
I shook it, slapped it, turned it this way and that. Click. Clickclickclick. Nothing
The PA system wouldn't come on!
Good people pitched in to lend a hand; poking fingers here and there; asking whether we'd tried doing this, or that, or the other,.. for the fifth time. Shazeb frantically got a couple of musicians to check out whether any of their mixers might be able to deliver enough juice to power the speakers. Deepak was despatched to fetch in the back-up powered-speaker that Lionel Dentan had so kindly gifted to the party a year earlier.
And then, all of a sudden, sitting almost forlorn upon the floor, the PA-system gave us that beloved green light!
Apparently, what had happened was that the electricity-supply voltage had been below the threshold for the PA system to switch on, and at the same time, above the threshold for our power backup to take over.
Put me down as having paid for that lesson of a lifetime with say,.. um, 2 heart attacks.
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Day-3, Morning Session:
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Ashhar Farooqui and Vinny Bhagat opened the morning of the final day, to first explain a bit about what the hey their performance of the previous evening had been all about, which, it seems came specifically right down to contributing towards hopefully turning around the Fates, on the doomed holy river Yamuna (at Delhi in particular; it's deepest wilful bruise). They also spoke of their Liveroom initiative, which had been steadily streaming live, and sometimes globally distributive, performances almost every weekend since CeC last year. And of course, there was word too of Sin;drome, the new identity under which they were performing experimental new works,.. and, also Ashhar's lovely new set-up, 50kms further into the mountains, into which he welcomed musicians and other experimental creative practitioners, to serve fellowship residencies.
Puneet Bhatt too expanded upon his performance of the previous evening, but also took the opportunity to introduce some of the documentary work he'd lately been doing on local music, creativity and innovation, as most eloquently represented via a short video-documentary he'd made, on a community of men who climb up into high jungles ever summer, to establish temporary camps and temporary wood-lathes, run off stream water-flows, upon which they turned traditional food vessels out of the preceding winters' fallen hardwoods, of specific exotic trees. (Phew! Long sentence, huh?~:o)
Friedrich Glorian was back with us after a year's gap, and there was much he had been up to through the interregnum; ranged from his always-ongoing performances, workshops, and commissioned work, through his equally always-ongoing experimentation with new instruments, new sounds, new processes, new paradigms. And, in a sort of peculiar continuum to his having brought in a full-tilt guzheng almost as large as himself, for CeC 2011, this time, what he'd brought along, in addition to his usual wireframe main-instrument, and his various electronics, was a most peculiar overtone flute that stood taller than himself. And he played the heck out of it too. LoL.
Sheela Raj then began to manifest another new continuum for Friedrich to eventually be drawn into, soon enough, with her heArtLight Collective, out in the open, behind the tent. Vinny Bhagat was providing sound synthesis off his laptop. Paul Schneiter was banging beats out of the shell of a dried half-pumpkin, all the way from Africa,.. just like the little mbira was plucking away, to glory.
Darcy McMurray was lead-dancer once again, with Raakesh MPS, also once again, as they had been for Jennifer Mascall, Day-2. But this time, out in open space, they drew others too into what thereby gradually became almost some sort of pagan power-dance, with people swaying about, pirouetting, swinging in tandem, some adding all sorts of vocalizations to the music of Vinny and Paul.
Raakesh MPS, if I remember right, was the one who started the migration back into the tent, and onto stage, twisting his body as he went along, into separate little vignettes, eventually tracing them against a reactively morphing fractal tree, projected onto the backdrop screen, by Kenneth Newby.
Darcy too was back on stage soon enough, intertwining herself in and out of Raakesh's contortions, before both finally tumbled and crawled off the stage, as though to mark lunchtime.
And, Sheela Gee jumped about the whole while, extemporaneously directing it all, all the way, in her inimitable style, whilst Freidrich Glorian gently took over building the soundscape with his extraordinary live processing of his extraordinary live instruments, from Vinny and Paul, as everybody trickled back in after the dancers.
So, what was for lunch anyway? Um, I really don't remember.
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Day-3, Afternoon Session:
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Petra Rehwald launched the afternoon, after a lot of fretful backing and forthing through the morning, in regard to whether the tonality and tuning of her lovely hackbrett could hold up to the moisture still in the air from the rains of the day before. She'd eventually decided to live dangerously, and pulled out the big fella on stage, to be accompanied by Paul and his African half-pumpkin shell. And, she then interspersed her lovely performance with anecdotes from her other collaborations, with many another musician, of many a different sort, across much of India, and the world.
Diya Sarker then slipped in, in her inimitably gentle and shy way, sitting unobtrusively upon a corner of the stage, as though she were just filling in a gap, as she spoke and projected images onto the main screen, whilst the next lot set up their rigs almost right on top of her head. In much the same quiet way, the experimentally creative injection into CeC 2013 that she was leading us through with her images, had apparently been going on all along, without almost anyone else knowing of it, right on the periphery of things, where she'd been setting up unusual little sketches, in unusual little settings, with folded paper animals and shapes, that altogether coalesced fleetingly into seemingly casual images, that were actually sometimes eerily evocative of a virtual reality that they certainly were not,.. in the normal sense of such term.
Gene Kogan and Sharath Chandra were that next lot to come on, having set up a complex collaborative rig that ranged from the lovely little gestural controller that Gene had been beta-testing, and writing software for, through to all sorts of little gadgets that Sharath seemed to have pulled out of a mad hat, and committed brutal surgery upon in some instances. In performance, if I correctly understand what was going on, the way it went was that Sharath was generating waves of experimental sound synthesis, that was hopped over to Gene, at the adjoining table, who was processing it alongside some sound synthesis of his own, whilst at the same time driving a smooth flow of generative visual art off to the projector.
Tritha Sinha and her Space crew, Ritika Singh and Paul Schneiter, took over from there, with Friedrich Glorian invited aboard for an experimental collaboration at the end of their set. First came a bit of a voyage through some of the genres of work that Tritha has variously been doing; some that she'd been working on with Space, and; some that she'd been working on with others. Sometimes in Kolkata; sometimes in Paris, and; oftentimes in other countries, other cities. And, the whole of it was delivered as an intertwining of live songs, recorded videos, soaring thoughts, and wild fantasies.
Good stuff to be scoffed before evening tea, almost any day.
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Day-3, Evening Session:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here at last was that Experimental Ecstasy slot that had become such an important part of every CeC thus far,.. barring just CeC 2012, when we all lost precious time one day to a late pasta for lunch. Shazeb had made sure to have it fall perfectly into place this time, with the entire last slot of the incident actually given over entirely to experimental collaborations.
Ashhar and Vinny were on for the whammy, set up stage-left to deliver audio and video. Friedrich was set up stage-right to deliver just audio, with Tritha seated at a mic beside him. Stine Gro was hunched over down-right, with her flip little macro-projector, girdled up to do battle with the main projector this time. Paul popped in and out of the picture with his pumpkin half-shell. Freeman Murray took the stage awhile along the way, to contribute what seemed to me to be a Himalayan Buddhist chant, or drone.
Even I managed to squeeze in a few whines and moans with my trusty little guitar and eBow, which was then picked up for a bit by Kenneth, and also the Delhi-based metal guitarist Saurabh Babbar, who just happened to be amongst us. But,, both of them kept the volume low, leaving me sometimes guessing at what they were upto.
But then, silly ole man, there was much else I missed, or just don't remember, too.
~.~
With deep gratitude to the good people who variously made up CeC 2013, by either their presentations, and/or their performances, their external contributions to content, or just their wonderfully supportive presence.
Shankar Barua
April 19, 2013
Guwahati, Assam, India
:: Some responses to CeC 2013 ::
~
ohhh, i want to go back and expirience it all again!
Thank you _______, Thank you ______ for making this happen!
_______ and I and _______ had a remarkable time at CEC
so there is a strong outcome here. and thanks again so much for the fruitful encounters that you have created and initiated.
Thanks for hosting such an incredible gathering of people, I felt so fortunate to be a part of that special CEC!
It was also so amazing to get to stay in that little piece of paradise. wow, thanks all, for a wonderful CeC.
I met more interesting people there than in over a month spent at _____
It was a truly inspirational experience, and I'm sure i speak for all of us.
it was more than fantastico
Thanks again for another incident. One I will always remember
CeC 2013 was highly inspiring. we're in contact someway or the other,
a special thank you to ... all at cec2013 for just being beautiful...
It was really nice and inspiring meeting you all at this wonderful event.
I want to say again that I really enjoyed the festival. So thank you for organizing it.
I feel that this year its title could have been Carnival of Eclectic Collaboration, as we did so many.
Thank you _______ and ______ and to all those who made CeC yet another enthralling experience :)
and of course thank you so much all you inspiring and creative spirits and souls.
thank you again for this wonderful opportunity and audience.
a big big thanks to _______, _______ and _______ for providing all the real and virtual spaces
even the weather gods played the game... This was an incredibly enriching experience for us, and very inspirational in so many ways.
Great meeting you all, and experiencing what you had to offer. It was a treat for the senses :)
all this is a result of wonderful meetings and collaborations at CeC...so grateful to you for creating such a unique playground for free spirits in the rare aether of Sattal Christian Ashram. Sukriya/Thanks/Merci
~
ohhh, i want to go back and expirience it all again!
Thank you _______, Thank you ______ for making this happen!
_______ and I and _______ had a remarkable time at CEC
so there is a strong outcome here. and thanks again so much for the fruitful encounters that you have created and initiated.
Thanks for hosting such an incredible gathering of people, I felt so fortunate to be a part of that special CEC!
It was also so amazing to get to stay in that little piece of paradise. wow, thanks all, for a wonderful CeC.
I met more interesting people there than in over a month spent at _____
It was a truly inspirational experience, and I'm sure i speak for all of us.
it was more than fantastico
Thanks again for another incident. One I will always remember
CeC 2013 was highly inspiring. we're in contact someway or the other,
a special thank you to ... all at cec2013 for just being beautiful...
It was really nice and inspiring meeting you all at this wonderful event.
I want to say again that I really enjoyed the festival. So thank you for organizing it.
I feel that this year its title could have been Carnival of Eclectic Collaboration, as we did so many.
Thank you _______ and ______ and to all those who made CeC yet another enthralling experience :)
and of course thank you so much all you inspiring and creative spirits and souls.
thank you again for this wonderful opportunity and audience.
a big big thanks to _______, _______ and _______ for providing all the real and virtual spaces
even the weather gods played the game... This was an incredibly enriching experience for us, and very inspirational in so many ways.
Great meeting you all, and experiencing what you had to offer. It was a treat for the senses :)
all this is a result of wonderful meetings and collaborations at CeC...so grateful to you for creating such a unique playground for free spirits in the rare aether of Sattal Christian Ashram. Sukriya/Thanks/Merci