I came to ITP partially to take New Instruments for Musical Expression. My entrance essay discussed my desire to study and develop Interactive Music Systems, and I started off by building a few — in Physical Computing, in Living Art, and then again (partially) in Designing for Constraints. Feeling that I’ve already worked on some of the territory covered in NIME, I decided to take Performing Technology instead. As I write this, it occurs to me that my love of music has always fallen closer to the performance rather than the interface for performing. It has been the act of playing the instrument rather than formal understanding it and its capabilities that satisfies me. At other times, I have acted and sung — always finding inspiration in the rush that accompanies the moment the performance begins.
I’m finding intersections between performance and mapping as we begin this class and as I enter “Wide Spread Content: Mapping”. Something intrigues me about the connection between the plan (script, manuscript, situation — the map) and the performance it enables. I hope to discover more about this and to do some performing myself.
