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Day 5 - Mimi and Moomin on a whirlwind tour of space and New York | Puppet Portal Project - phase 2
2010-11-10
Day 5 - Mimi and Moomin on a whirlwind tour of space and New York
Today I worked from my home studio. Again, my role was to be a performer and/or composer in the link-ups and provide suitable music for other artists and childrens ideas. From the experience of the last link-up from my studio and in the hospital setting, to see how excited children were to meet a puppet in the link-up, I felt that it was better if I used puppets in my performance rather than the real me! For today`s link-ups, I wanted to explore live performance (last time I used a lot of pre-recorded sounds in the audio sequencer) using the keyboard for these link-ups so needed in some way to disguise my hands. So, in the morning, I created 2 sock puppets with holes cut out at the back which allowed my fingers to be free to play the keys. I had contacted the other artists during the week and knew that I was going to be featuring in a New York landscape and in a story called Journey to the moon. My keyboard `stage` was quite a different setup for both stories!
In the morning, I did 2 link-ups. The first was with Niamh in Hospital D, where Niamh was working with 1 young child who had created a puppet. I played a disco beat on the keyboard and my puppets danced around the keys. There was a slight problem with audio in that I couldnt really hear Niamh but it seemed to work well. The next link-up was with Hospital E, where Siobhn and Eszther were based. They had a beautiful moon show ready to present for me. I was invited to play some music and sounds effects alongside the performance and used a slow drum pattern (from the synthesiser) and a sound that was like a theremin so that the whole piece had quite a spacey sound. The children seemed to enjoy it and danced along. My puppets, Mimi and Moomin, explained that they were watching the moon performance from another planet and that it was wonderful! My puppets also got to play and dance with a little boy, who was in his bed, and his horse puppet.
In the afternoon, I linked up with Sally in Hospital C. Sally and the children had created a New York landscape and I met various characters such as Lady Gaga. My puppets were in a Broadway musical this time and played a disco tune for the New York story.
The puppets allowed me to create more a fantasy space for the children and meant that I could collaborate with them in a more engaging way. It would be nice to incorporate music and sound even more into these stories but after spending a day in Hospital E, I know how challenging it is to organise the stories in advance of the link-ups. It would seem that sometimes the live performance i.e. on the synth, works well but on other occasions, sound effects would work better. I felt this happened today where sound effects would have been more appropriate in the moon story and perhaps, prepared songs would have worked better for the New York performance.
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