Notes for an intro I may or may not give at Galapagos tonight. (Either way it won't be this long and involved--I only have a minute or so to talk.)
Although this was billed as a performance it is actually a demo.
The "demo scene" emerged in European computer geek culture.
Programmers got together and set up monitors on folding tables and showed each other what they were working on.
Tonight I am demo-ing a CD of music (four songs dj-ed together into a continous mix) and a DVD of 15-20 animations.
The two will run simultaneously--the points of contact between them are fairly random.
Although I'm calling this a demo I'm not a programmer, but an artist using a home computer to make images and music.
The visuals are as "original" as the software allows--I try to use the simplest programs so it is clearer what is "mine."
Some of the images originated on the Internet but all of those have been manipulated or added to.
The music is all "mine"--i.e., it's all live synthesis written and performed by me and tracked down for CD, although the music-creation software programming and hardware wiring is a "default," that is, someone else's work.
All of this content (images and audio) has been published to the web on my blog(s).
Part of the reason I'm demo-ing it is to see how it "scales up" to big screen projection and a club-sized PA system.
I tried to pick work that was fairly transparent and iconic--that would read or sound clearly no matter what the environment.
We'll see if it works.