"Bands using interactive technology, games composers becoming famous in their own right and all of these things – they’re just really interesting to examine and put together in a project like this"
Musify + Gamify promises to be a great deal more than a celebration of video game music. Across 11 days of interactive exhibition displays, two concert events and one debate on the future of music, audiences will get to experience some of the most forward-thinking creators at work. Featuring performances as diverse as indie bit-pop of 7bit Hero, who interacts with audiences via a mobile phone game, and the interdisciplinary exploitation of chamber music from Ensemble Offspring, the program is curated by Ollie Bown and Lian Loke. A music technology academic and a creative himself, Bown explains how Musify + Gamify came to be.
“My interest really is in the forefront of the technology and the possibilities from an academic point of view, and so we’ve just looked across that whole spread of activity so it’s quite a pick-and-choose selection of work that we’re showcasing, and a lot of it is Australian. 7bit Hero, I heard about them through an academic colleague in Brisbane who’d put them on an event and said that they were well worth getting involved. Witnessing those sort of things starting to happen – bands using interactive technology, games composers becoming famous in their own right and all of these things – they’re just really interesting to examine and put together in a project like this. The first [concert], if you’re into new music or contemporary classical or improvised music it will be quite a familiar format – it’s more focused in that experimental music area,” says Bown, who excitedly explains that a work by Steffan Ianigro will be influenced by online interaction from audience members prior to attending. “And the second one is going to be a bit more eclectic – it’s a bit more electronica focused, it’s a bit more probably no-idea-what-to-expect!”
"It’s a bit more electronica focused, it’s a bit more probably no-idea-what-to-expect!”
The exhibition component is filled with plenty of weird and wonderful ideas, among them a mobile phone orchestra in which your iPhone ‘breeds’ with that of the person next to you, and a reactive audio-visual experience called Dyad that promises ‘a harmonious synthesis of colour and sound’. For most, words are inadequate – Mini Duelling Guitars, a pinball/instrument hybrid by Lucas Abela, sounds like mad fun. “A couple of guitars actually form the edges of the machine, and there’s a Fender amp at the end and a bunch of pedals which can be triggered from the pinball striking some of the tabs. The ball goes flying around and this crazy semi-random sequence of metal guitar sound emanates out; it’s quite immersive… They break down the barrier in terms of drawing people into producing music so they can be engaged in the fun.
“[I hope to] really treat our audience to an experience that would take them somewhere else that they wouldn’t normally see, and from my academic research side of things I’m just really fascinated in this world and the potential of interactive music systems.
