tafelmuziek: paradiso placard

july 31, 2005.

Though it might have, it did not (rain in Amsterdam last thursday). The day began by setting a bright and sunny tone, then later steadily the skies turned more gray. But it did not (rain) ... So then what did happen there, achterom bij Paradiso?

We installed our equipment on a table outside the central side door. Outside, but nevertheless protected from rain that - or so it seemed - still might come.
Inside we set up a 'listening space', around a small table with a Behringer multi channel headphones distribution amplifier and ten pairs of headphones.
Outside/Inside.
Thus - as Peter observed - illustrating the ambiguity in the 'whereabouts' of an 'internet headphone concert'. Is the event's location the outside spot (the 'muziektafel') where we are generating the sounds? Or rather the inside place where one can listen to them on headphone? Or should one say that the real thing is in that what is out there on the net?

Apart from the open doors and access both to its in- and its outside, Paradiso provided drinks, lights, technical assistance, and - most important of course - the wireless internet connection, to stream to the placard server. We used the Max runtime patch for ogg-vorbis encoding and streaming, provided by the 'placard headquarters'. All sounds went through my Phonic MM-1002 mixer into Peter's Mac laptop, which was reserved for 'sending'.
We started installing around five, and shortly before seven we were set and ready for the crowds ...
And though eventually 'crowds' did not turn up, I think we can look back upon a successful and interesting evening, and a fine 3 hour long stream ...
As from 22h onwards Paradiso had to be prepared for a slightly different event - a 'Noodlanding!' party, starting at 23h30 - including a band's sound check, it really could not last any longer. This time ...

Martin Takken used his cell phone to make a short mobile video reportage of thursday's 'Raudio-at-Paradiso' placard. If your browser (plug in) understands the '3gp' format, you may watch and listen by clicking the thumbnail image to the left ...
The clip is part of Park's experimental vodcast with 'movies for mobiles'.

Besides 0 ok, 0:1 (with Martin Takken) the Raudio-at-Paradiso placard included guest performances by one half of Powerbooks Unplugged (Jan-Kees van Kampen [adrian vacca] and Hannes Hoelzl), and by the (impromptu?) duo 'Fuck 'n' Roll' (Constant Dullaert and friend).

We were very pleased having these 'guest' appearances, and I'd like to take this opportunity to once again thank the performers for being there and 'ready' on such a very short notice. Both duos simply 'set up, plugged and played', enabling us to seamlessly weave their contributions into the ongoing three hour stream.

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Here, for the records, is the mini placard's full program:

19.30-20.30 :: 0 ok, 0:1
20.30-21.00 :: vacca & hoelzl
21.00-21.30 :: fuck 'n' roll
21.30-22.30 :: 0 ok, 0:1 (cont.)

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0 ok, 0:1 alternated its playing as a trio with short solo interventions and performances in the three possible duo formats (fpcm/hars, hars/martin, martin/fpcm).
I stuck in this placard performance - mainly - to my electric guitar (plugged straight into the mixing desk and played with my ten fingers, a bottleneck and an old electric toothbrush) and the 'by hand' manipulation of two very recent dictaphone recordings (played back on the wonderful Marantz PMD101 monophonic cassette recorder that I bought for 7 (seven!) euros at a Montreuil garage sale some time ago): a recording of two french teenage girls chatting in the Thalys (they were traveling from Paris to Rotterdam, and seated next to us in the train that took us to Amsterdam some ten days ago), and one of myself and the kids playing ball in the streets of Amsterdam (recorded last thursday just before leaving for Paradiso to set up for the placard).

As in our earlier (Ameland) placard performances, we used the stream's lag (which may be as long as 20 to 30 seconds) as a feedback loop. By playing back the stream through two small speakers-in-a-box and picking it up with a microphone-in-the-box whose signal went back into the console, back into the stream.

fpcm, by the way, as part of his interventions did a great parody of 'hars-fooling-around-with-shells-in-a-bucket' as 'fpcm-fooling-around-with-coins-in-a-box'. The (small metal) box was filled to the rim, so loads of them ended up on the metal platform that we were standing on. Where once again they could be put to fine 'pure sound'-ing use ...

Eventually, the 'Raudio-at-Paradiso placard' was the low-profile event that we intended it to be. Though, in hindsight, I do think it deserved the 'on the spot' crowd that - for some reason ;-) - decided to be elsewhere ... To the dismay, most of all, of our charming street team, that saw some of its valued merchandise being handed out, as a consolation, for free, to remnants of the crowd they had expected, but sadly arriving at the time we were already packing and heading for home ...

[ added november 20th, 2007 :

Live Beyond the Paradiso, Amsterdam

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During our 4 days residency in the Archipel Media Lab, from november 14th till 17th, 2007, FPCM and I used part of our working time to re-visit the recordings we made at the Outside/Inside Paradiso Placard of july 28th, 2005. We thus compiled an ookoi EP of tracks built from - mainly - recordings of the 0 OK, 0:1 performance on that Paradiso Placard evening.
The EP is part of PARK4DDD. It is called Live Beyond the Paradiso, Amsterdam, and consists in a series of 16 tracks with a total playing time of about 20 minutes.
ookoi's Live Beyond the Paradiso, Amsterdam EP will be available as a data-dump, as of december 7th, 2007, during Video Vortex.2, the second part of the Video Vortex exhibition/manifestion at the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/Time Based Arts, on the Keizersgracht 264 in Amsterdam. In addition to the sixteen mp3 files, the EP's data-dump includes graphics, a pdf version of this soundblog page, and Martin Takken's Paradiso Placard pocketmovie. ]

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[ added March 15th, 2014 :

Live Beyond The Paradiso (with one or two tiny modifications, mainly to provide future musicologists with a chance to research something ;-) is now available as a high quality digital download at Bandcamp's ... ]

[ Next related SB entries: "life on ze road" :: cellarlar heroes ]