brigitta muntendorf

Public Privacy #2 Piano Cover

premiere
23.11.2013 piano+ festival | ZKM Karlsruhe

performer / written for
Sebastian Berweck

duration
8:00 min

technical setup
video projection (16:9), stereo-tape, sampler with local amplification + sampler program (for example NI-Kontakt)

Every live performer get’s his or her own video. Parts as the beginning or the end and also significant scenes in the middle of the piece should be recorded by the live performer with a camera or webcam or by the composer in a Skype session. All live performer are represented in the following videos as „Youtuber“ and replace by and by the youtube performer.

for sampler solo and fixed media

Piano Cover is the second piece in the series Public Privacy for solo instrument and fixed media, in which a live performer enters into a dialogue with Youtube instrumentalists. The series explores the form I call Social Composing and the related question of the demarcation between the private and the public.

The principle of “covering” takes on a different meaning in Piano Cover than in Flute Cover, since the sampler is not used to cover other samplers, synthesizers or pianos, but rather a completely different instrument – the electric guitar. For Public Privacy #2 Piano Cover, I contacted various Youtubers and made a visual collage out of their e-guitar covers, which – in contrast to a concert situation – follows procedures and behaviors of a video presentation in social media. E-guitar covers (or other covers) are cover models in which amateur musicians or professionals replace the melody part of popular songs with a (in this case) e-guitar part and upload the result to YouTube. What is exciting here is, on the one hand, how ideas of virtuosity and the use of classical instruments are dealt with in today’s everyday life. At the same time, the videos also shed light on how the concepts of the private and the public are defined, how much a player tells about him- or herself and their living space, about aesthetics, about the form of presentation and its repercussions on the music, and about the present and the absent in a musical performance.

For the performance, each performer receives his or her own video with recordings of the performer in a private environment. Little by little, the Youtube videos are thus displaced and instead fake Youtube videos of the performers are collaged.