11 January 2014 

Soundthought CCA, Glasgow, 7pm

MS Laminate

“It started strongly with the straightforward but powerfully effective Laminate by Mark Summers, in which the fragile clicks and scratchings he drew from his expressive caressing of a viola da gamba were looped through four speakers surrounding the listeners, building to a dense, thick wall of sound that was impressive in its majesty.” The Scotsman, 13 January 2014.

I gave a paper about my piece Laminate and its (as yet uncreated companion De-laminate) at Soundthought in January. The abstract went like this:

Lamination is easy, de-lamination is not

This paper presents my work Laminate and its work-in-progress companion De-laminate, both for improviser and 4-channel computer system.

Laminate uses a relatively simple delay and feedback system to turn audio from the improviser into four channels of immersive sound that become increasingly layered over the course of the piece. The resulting piece is conceptually simple, yet offers the improviser a number of different experiences over its course.

An analysis of Laminate, in terms of aesthetics, technical issues and performance practice, leads into a discussion of its companion piece De-laminate. Starting where Laminate finishes, De-laminate strips layers from the four channels. This process is much less straightforward to achieve technically, and the methods used impact on the aesthetics of the final piece far more than in Laminate. Potential processes for both computer and improviser in terms of aesthetic outcomes and performance practice will be discussed.