Reviewing

The Anatomy of a String Quartet

Samson Young, Mivos Quartet

The Anatomy of a String Quartet is a study of the potentials of media technology as tools for augmenting, extending and reconfiguring the musician’s body. It also questions how the process of mediation, and the perception of such processes, could alter the definition of “liveness” in electronic music. The Anatomy of a String Quartet, at its core, is an audio-visual performance with/through a “prosthetically amplified” string quartet. Each member of the quartet is monitored by a multitude of sensing apparatus, from eye tracking glasses to brainwave sensors. The bio-sensory data generated by the quartet in-performance become materials for the laptop musician’s audio-visual improvisation. The piece unfolds in five “situations.” Each situation is a reconfiguration of the relationship between the quartet on the one hand, and the laptop musician on the other.

Opening June 28 2015 @ Museum of the Moving Image

The last decade has witnessed an interest in the use of media technology in the classical concert space: from broadcast of operatic events, to large scale video projection accompanying live music performance, to the implementation of multi-channel sound systems – the integration of these new media tools is now a common place, especially in the arena of contemporary music. Despite this bloom in interest, when applied in the concert hall media technology often serve a less-than-central role, and its expressive potentials are often under exploited. Often, media technologies are merely functional instruments for the mediation and amplification of sound; when media operates as one of the elements in a musical synesthesia, the relationship and interaction between the live event and the media technologies that meditates it are sometimes taken for granted.

The Anatomy of a String Quartet is a study of the potentials of media technology as tools for augmenting, extending and reconfiguring the musician’s body. It also questions how the process of mediation, and the perception of such processes, could alter the definition of “liveness” in electronic music. The Anatomy of a String Quartet, at its core, is an audio-visual performance with/through a “prosthetically amplified” string quartet. Each member of the quartet is monitored by a multitude of sensing apparatus, from eye tracking glasses to brainwave sensors. The bio-sensory data generated by the quartet in-performance become materials for the laptop musician’s audio-visual improvisation. The piece unfolds in five “situations.” Each situation is a reconfiguration of the relationship between the quartet on the one hand, and the laptop musician on the other.

BIO

  1. Samsung Young: http://www.thismusicisfalse.com/CV
  2. Mivos Quartet: http://www.mivosquartet.com/#!about/sitepage_1

Follow these links for more details

Samson Young

Multicultural paradigms, weaved into a symphony of image and sound, are
at the heart of Hong Kong artist and composer, Samson Young’s practice. With a
formal cross-cultural training in music composition, Young channels his attunement
to melody by pushing it’s formalist boundaries to create innovative cross-media
experiences that touch upon the recurring topics of identity, war and literature.
Emphasising a sense of play and intellectual witticism through the inclusion of
unexpected sounds, ranging from the ring of Gameboys, fanfare rides and Cantonese
nursery rhymes, to references of great works of fiction, Young builds peculiar
scenarios that challenge one’s everyday associations with objects, stories and
spaces. Samson Young is a highly regarded composer and media artist based in Hong
Kong. Holding a PhD in Music Composition from Princeton University (2013), Young has
been selected to represent Hong Kong at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 and has
held multiple solo exhibitions worldwide, including the Goethe-Institute, Hong Kong
and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan. He is a member of multiple
bands and has collaborated with orchestras worldwide.

Mivos Quartet

[http://www.mivosquartet.com/#!about/sitepage_1](http://www.mivosquartet.com/#!about/sitepage_1)