Surface Tension and Simple Lines of Enquiry/Machine for Taking Time: Collaborative works created by Eve Egoyan and David Rokeby

In Surface Tension Eve’s performance at the keyboard of a disklavier (an acoustic piano with a computer interface) is transformed and interpreted by a computer into live visual images projected onto a screen rising from the body of the piano. The visuals respond to a variety of performance parameters including dynamics, pitch, the harmonic relation between pitches, the use of the sustain pedal, and the duration of individual notes. This extends the piano into a visual instrument as well as a musical one. The performance itself is a loosely structured audio-visual improvisation in 5 movements. The improvisation is shaped partly by Eve’s response to the system’s visual response to her playing. This performance combines Simple Lines of Enquiry composed by Ann Southam for Eve Egoyan and the video work Machine for Taking Time by David Rokeby. The music and video are not explicitly synchronized but move through time in such compatible ways that they enliven and accent each other. Eve Egoyan’s recording of Simple Lines of Enquiry was chosen by Alex Ross of The New Yorker Magazine as one of his 10 exceptional recordings for 2009. Machine for Taking Time draws from a database of 750,000 images of Montréal captured over the period of a year. It stitches together a slow and seamless pan across the city in which movement is constant, but time is variable and fluid.