>From Helen Thorington's Interview with Miya Masaoka "Miya Masaoka is a musician, composer and performance artist. She has created works for koto, laser interfaces, laptop and video and written scores for ensembles, chamber orchestras and mixed choirs. In her performance pieces she has investigated the sound and movement of insects, as well as the physiological responses of plants, the human brain, and her own body...
Helen: I have been impressed with your work with inter-species interactions. I wonder if you would tell us how you became interested in this and what made you think of other species as potential live performers? cockroaches_legs.jpg Miya: Hmmm. I have always been interested in insects, the sounds of insects, and the hobby of having crickets as pets, and the way that social insects communicate and organize their societies in hierarchical structures. I was also thinking about the idea of the body, race and gender, and wanted to illustrate the body as a blank canvas upon which societal constructs are created and assigned. Cockroaches are social, not everyone's favorite creature, and these from Madagascar make an incredible sound that sounds generated from a white noise filter. When I heard them, I immediately wanted to record their sounds and use them in a piece. Then I thought, why not use the actual bugs in the pieces, and have them create the composition with their movements? So when the roaches wander around on my body, while I'm lying on a table, their movements break the laser beams, and their amplified, pre-recorded sounds are heard in the space..." Continue reading at Networked_Music_Review: http://tinyurl.com/3393zu Miya is available for questions (via the comments section) until July 7, 2007. Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: http://turbulence.org Networked_Performance Blog: http://turbulence.org/blog Networked_Music_Review: http://turbulence.org/networked_music_review Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade New American Radio: http://somewhere.org _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
