d

d was the first piece I wrote with percussionist Doug Nottingham. I took apart piezo buzzers and built them into foam shapes, and included mercury switches so they would automatically turn on and off. Doug tries to follow the placement of the shapes on timpani as directed by the video while improvising with mallets, bow, etc. The projected video is the same as the video Doug watches, except it is variably delayed. The intention here is to make it ambiguous whether Doug is following the computer or the computer is following Doug. There is a funny story about when we traveled to perform the piece at PASIC, which is a bit too long to be told here. Think of buzzers with mercury switches and airport security and you can probably imagine.