Aphex Twin was recently asked to write a few pieces for the European Culture Congress in Poland that took place in September. Initially he was going to fly over and collaborate with Polish composer and conductor Krzysztof Penderecki in person but Richard James had other ideas. Richard decided to try and rig it so that he could control a 48-piece string section and a 24-person choir by remote control—via midi controllers, headphones and remote visual cues. The complicated task fell to Aphex and Weirdcore, a sound engineer, to work out the tricky logistics.
74 pairs of headphones, 36 small monitors and six plasma screens—all split into seven different feeds. In two weeks’ time Weirdcore put together the interface using Max/MSP/Jitter and Max for the live audio, with input from Andrew Benson who recommended the best way to achieve what he needed. As you might notice there are some Guitar Hero-esque color coding bars you can see in the video, Weirdcore explains: “Pretty simple actually. Each part of the orchestra/choir is color coded, instructions wise and lighting wise, which has the volume instructions connecting to the lighting system so the louder they have to play, the more brightly they light up… and vice versa.”
The experiment went so well that James is keen to do more of this kind of stuff in his upcoming gigs, which means they’ll have to refine the whole setup to make something much more advanced.
Aphex Twin's remote orchestra (full lengh edit) from weirdcore on Vimeo.
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