Please email lee.ashcroft@hotmail.co.uk and include the words "Za Ginipiggu" in the title.
Friday 5th June 2009 - Follow Spot @ 11 W. Illinois, 4th Floor, Chicago
2010 TBC - Culture Is A Dare @ The Railway Hotel, Southend-On-Sea
Za Ginipiggu is a temporary conceptual experimental music project, with an aim to push the boundaries of what it means to be a composer in the 21st Century - an age when technology makes the production of music easier than ever before, and when listeners demand more control over the media they consume, whether via. peer-to-peer downloads, social-networking or user-generated content. This is about destroying the conventional music composer in favour of relinquishing control to unknown inputs, whether they be methods of chance, random computer-generation or people with little to no knowledge of the kinds of sounds they are creating. With so much of modern composition seemingly being derivative of works before them (running the gamete right through manufactured pop to contemporary classical music), methods such as this may represent a way forward towards creating somethng truly original in modern music. These points will be addressed across two album releases and a series of audience-driven live performances.
RSAW is an experiment in audience participation, reliquishing compositional control. Audience members at live shows are invited to compose a piece of music by randomly selecting various parameters relating to segments of the piece, including the length, note, pitch and waveform, and in future plans are to extend this to further parameters of the subtractive synthesiser to determine exactly what kind of sound will be produced. Once all parameters are in place, these details are converted into a sound file and played out live to the very audience responsible for writing the piece. The sound is then further manipulated live using a granular synthesis filter; in the future the plan is to allow audience members control over this manipulation as well.
If pop really has eaten itself, what can be done? With so much of modern music being entirely derivative of what's been before, if there any way of creating music that truly can be called original? AEIFW is an experiment in finding out what music sounds like when compositional control is relinquished and handed to a chance and fate, including randomiser settings in various pieces of computer software and coin and dice throwing processes. The focus is currently on producing electronic dance music and modern-classical pieces, with a view to expanding these processes to more diverse musical genres over time. There are currently no plans to perform these works live, however there are plans to release a collection of these works at some point.
The name Za Ginipiggu (ギニーピッグ), the literal translation to Japanese of the phrase "the guinea pig", is a reference to the experimental nature of this project. The name comes from a series of Japanese horror videos made in the 1980s of the same name, infamous for their depictions of anotamically graphic gore and violence, so convincing the actor Charlie Sheen reported the videos to the FBI believing them to be real, and for their mistaken link to a series of murders committed in the late 1980s in Japan by Tsutomu Miyazaki. In Japan it is now a criminal offense to create a film or video under the name ギニーピッグ.
Thursday 27th August 2009 - The Flux Capacitor Presents... @ The Bull Music Room, Colchester
Due to technical difficulties on the night, this set will remain offline until further notice.
Saturday 20th June 2009 - Panic @ The Railway Hotel
An amusing performance to a group of largely uninterested group of people who suddenly went quiet as I ramped up the sound. Unfortunately this caused my laptop to crash two minutes before the end.
Friday 5th June 2009 - Follow Spot @ 11 W. Illinois, 4th Floor, Chicago
At 2am I sat down at home to broadcast a live set to the people of Chicago, USA. To them it was 8pm. View the video in 'Latest' to see what happened.
Thursday 27th November 2008 - Mutebox @ V Bar, Colchester (as Mixomatosis)
A very last-minute stand in for Dan Merrill. This is the set that convinced me to develop the idea further.
Monday 18th December 2006 - LoveLove Records @ The Cambridge Arms, Colchester (as Mixomatosis)
A platform to try out a little idea that had been circulating for a while...