The Idea I Thought To Be So Wonderful

Still in its infancy, the idea of this project is inspired from improvisation performances where musicians are taken out of their comfort zones of playing their primary instrument and forced to interact with an unfamiliar instrument for the performance. Attempting to bridge the gap of distance and a small nod to environmentalism by preventing further intoxication of the earth from plane travel, I have devised a plan, yes a master plan of bringing together 4 musicians together to play via the internet, an instrument of my creation. Armed with new found programming wizardry from the previous thematic project, I will create (or am creating) a sound generator of sorts that would have specifically 16 tweak-able parameters. Each of the 4 participants would be given a lottery draw of 4 midi CC numbers to connect any form of a midi controller to their computer and via Open Sound Control, they would connect to my sound machine and improvise away for the exact period of 44 minutes.

Requiem

Desolation has always been a strong theme in most of my previous works, and this one will be no different. The first presentation in the blind improvisation series The Idea I Thought To Be So Wonderful will be aptly named Requiem. Why Requiem? Why 4 and not 5 or 6 participants? Why 44 minutes? And how is this related you ask?

The answer lies in my tradition and upbringing. For those of you who have never met me before or have an idea that my surname Chia is one of Chinese origins. Having grown up with stories of fortune and superstition, the number 4 according to many Chinese superstitions beliefs has an effect as malicious as the number 13 in Western culture. To have a house or car with the number such as 1144 would literally translate to "everyday die die" as the tone of the mandarin 1 and 4 resembles day and die respectively. This tonal similarity rings true for the Cantonese language as well.

Where I Am So Far On The Idea I Thought To Be So Wonderful

With the Rotterdam Film Festival ending just the previous weekend (03/01/08), I'm running out on excuses for delaying the execution of this project! So far, I have contacted a few inspirational persons such as Pierre Bastien and Jerome (Metamkine) to forge alliances and build interest in this project, unfortunately, as much as they agree that The Idea I Thought To Be So Wonderful is as wonderful as I thought, they didn't have the necessary technical capabilities to pull it off (ie. they don't use any form of midi). Further more on my quest for glory, others I contacted like Alva Noto never responded probably thinking The Idea I Thought To Be So Wonderful isn't so wonderful...

10Feb08
Contacted and finalized participants. The suspects are as follows,

- C-drik Fermont: Belgian Electronic music producer with as many projects and aliases as he has releases if not more. Raking out tunes alone as Kirdec, Crno Klank to collaborations with numerous other projects such as Axiome, Ammo, Dead Hollywood Stars, Logatomistes, Moonsanto, Elekore, Tetra plok and too many others to mention.

- Richard Scott: The man from Manchester originally but currently calling Berlin home. Has been producing music of sorts from ambient electronica to some beautifully recorded traditional instruments. A studied free jazz saxophone player, he has gone on to embrace the wonders of synthesizers and strange left field hardware midi controllers.

Update 18/01/08
Due to a hectic touring schedule during the critical streaming week, both Kera and André will be unable to participate in The Idea I Thought To Be So Wonderful...
- Incite/: Is the Hamburg-based experimental audiovisual electronics duo of Kera Nagel and André
Aspelmeier. In their own words they play bone-dry minimal electronics, fragmented slomo grooves and broken rhythmic arrangements synced with abstract grayscale videos. Besides Incite/, Kera and André have various other solo projects experimenting with different audio concoctions, the similar thread to this project would be the difficulty in classification of their output.