For the second in the series of Macgeorge House Sessions, Nela and Sonia were joined by FLO members Ariane Stolfi (who streamed from Brazil) and Donna Hewitt (who streamed from Sydney) as well as three special guests: Kylie Suspski (poetry), ReVerse Butcher (video projections and live visuals) and lovely Macgeorge House caretaker Michelle Frencham who ‘channeled’ the previous house owner, May Macgeorge, by sitting in her favourite armchair and reading poetry from (we think) her favourite books.
The title of the session, which took place on Sunday, 26th of May, was inspired by location of the house and its gardens which stretched all the way to the junction where Yarra River (also known as Birrarung) met Darebin Creek, both of which were used for tens of thousands of years as a food source and a meeting place by the Wurundjeri people, Indigenous Australians of the Kulin nation alliance, who spoke variations of the Woiwurrung language.
There is a bench at the very bottom of the garden, where Nela composed ‘Two Sisters for two flutes and video projection’, the inaguaral performance (by Marija Esih and Lidija Ljubičić) of which happened in situ!
Nela was performing with playsound.space using her laptop, grabbing streams by Ariana and Donna from Locustream SoundMap using iMac (borrowed from Macgeorge House), mixing live poetry performances (captured by 2 mics via a mixing desk (borrowed from Roger) and spatialising the performance through 4 PA speakers (brought in by Kylie and ReVerse Butcher).
Sonia was performing using playsound.space whilst streaming the mix of the performance to Locustream SoundMap using her mobile phone with LiveSHOUT app, so Ariane and Donna are able to play along (albeit delayed by 7+ seconds) whilst streaming from different locations in Sydney and Arraial d’Ajuda also using LiveSHOUT. And so it all went in a circular loop from stream to ‘re-stream’. It’s complicated but … you get the picture!
A BIG THANK you to the following peeps and organisations who supported FLO performance of Where Yarra Meets Darebin, as part of Macgeorge House Sessions 2019 in various ways:
- Roger Alsop (our dear colleague who gave us loads of gear to do the concert)
- University of Melbourne music stores staff (names ) who gave us the rest of the gear!
- University of Melbourne Macgeorge Fellowship 2019
- Bitwig Studio, Audio-Technica and RØDE Microphones for supplying FLO with software and hardware!
A BIG THANKS to EVERYONE who participated in this performance, which was held at the historic Macgeorge House, owned by the University of Melbourne, and not open to the general public. For those who could not be there, we hope you will enjoy a short video from the performance on our YouTube channel.
FLO 