Meet the Composer

David Bithell

the difference engine will be a 30-minute long performance for two pianists and two percussionists that incorporates a highly sophisticated yet playful array of interactive audio, video, and robotic technologies in an immersive theatrical/musical experience. The proposed title makes reference both to the early mechanical computer of the same name (designed by Charles Babbage in the late 1840's) as well as to the work’s investigation of the ability of multiple cameras to show successive iterations of an event - thereby revealing "difference". The composition exploits the artistic possibilities of newly-affordable wireless video, audio, and sensor technologies. On stage, a network of wireless cameras will be set in motion like miniature aerial trams along an elaborate terrain of suspended wire track that is constantly assembled and reconfigured by the live performers. This unique mobile visual perspective allows the gaze of the camera to become a semi-autonomous actor in the overall performance. Performers will interact and intersect with the passing surveillance cameras - catching fleeting moments of musical action and a variety of invented sound-generating robotic instruments "mid-air" and "midaction" – the resulting sounds and images projected through a multi-projector, multi-channel audio system. The performers will adopt roles that alternate between "actors" and "observers". As actors they will perform traditional musical actions observed in minute detail by the mobile cameras. As observers, the performers take an active role in assembling and reconfiguring the physical space - guiding the robotic cameras to capture (like a Rube Goldberg inspired camera crew) the actions of the other musicians or those of the autonomous robotic instruments.