I play modular eurorack analog synthesizers with a customizable software I built in MaxMSP that allows me to perform with a variety of different spatial speaker arrays. My software also allows me to control several inputs from the modular with filtering effects, customizable algorithmic spatialization trajectories, and individualized amplitude control. I also use my set up to process other external sound sources such as acoustic and electronic instruments. I also play as one half of the Watson & Kleijn duo.
Excerpts from Performances
TETHEr
TETHER, for modular synthesizers, dancer, and live projections, (2023-2024)
Luana Borges (visuals) Kristen Bernier (movement) Kari Watson (sound)
TETHER, a performance piece for three modular synthesizers, dancer and live projections, was created in collaboration with film maker and video artist Lua Borges and dancer Kristen Bernier in 2023.
Lasting 60 minutes, TETHER is performed in complete darkness, the only light source coming from two projectors operated by Lua Borges. One is a handheld digital projector, and the other is an overhead analog projector; both cast digital and analog projections onto a large mesh fabric loop. Bound together by this fabric loop, I move between synthesizer stations, patching and playing while pushing and pulling amidst and against Kristen within the fabric.
TETHER’s musical score is made up of 8 outputs from 3 euro rack modular synthesizers bedded by an underlying tape part. Each individual output from the synthesizers acts as an autonomous sound source, morphing and transforming throughout the course of the performance, bending and blurring with one another via cross synthesis. Over the course of the piece, patches are constructed and altered, continually moving the listeners through a dynamically layered and evolving sonic environment. TETHER’s tape part features custom convolution reverbs that I created by capturing heartbeats from Lua, Kristen and myself with a stethoscope microphone, resulting in three unique “chest cavity” convolution reverbs. This emphasis on the interior body plays off of the TETHER as a corollary to our first tether, the umbilical cord. The sheer fabric loop acts as a continually shifting canvas for the projection, with both Kristen and I enveloped. Limbs and torsos emerge, legible, but the fabric tether continues to mask and morph our bodies towards the creation of a hybridized organism. Here, the fabric loop serves as a multifarious mediator between bodies, sound, visuals, and movement, all intersecting and colliding, bound together in a network of shifting negotiations. Furthermore, our bodies become limiting factors for the other, providing a counterforce to physically navigate. Lua’s projection canvas is continuously evolving, impacted by our bodies, both individually, and as a joint force. Simultaneously, I navigate the sonic webs of synthesis that accumulate across the three modular synthesizer patches, and move between the three, navigating the various outputs to create a consistently evolving sonic canvas.