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Budapest’s most avante garde festival got underway this evening with a contemplative exploration of dimension, blending and manipulating the sound of the shakuhachi - an ancient Japanese wind instrument - with electronic music and video. The result was a transcendental experience - at least for myself.

The performance was created through a series of workshops that took place over the past year resulting in a collaborative creation involving 9 artists from the U.K., Hungary, and Austria.

A simple melody played on the shakuhachi was layered, woven and manipulated using both electronic keyboards and sensors that fed the sound into computers, where it was then transformed and returned to the concert hall, accompanied by a video showing the player: first, as he walked in meditation across Budapest’s chain bridge and second, as he travelled on Budapest’s public transit system.

In the first video - created by British artist Stewart Collinson - the player’s feet were followed, and at different times, the viewer was able to compare his pace with that of passers by. It was in these moments of the video that I, as a viewer, was able to imagine the possibility of the meditating player exisiting in a different dimension from the passers by; and in those moments I felt invited, by the music and video working together, to choose the dimension I wanted to be in.

Later, when the video followed the player into the public transit system (with images manipulated by Andrea Szigetvari’s keyboard) I was once again presented with the possibility of the player exisiting in an altered dimension from those around him. There were moments in the image manipulation when the rainbows of colors that were created suggested that this - these rainbows - are what exists in that dimension, if we just allow ourselves to see them.

Another highlight for me, was the fluid, multi-colored, inkblot-like image created by cycling74.com’s Max/MSP/Jitter software - manipulated at this concert by Austrian composer Johannes Kretz. What started as a simple purple circle, flowed, bounced, and morphed into a constantly evolving psychadelic inkblot. It literally flowed with the music - as the Jitter program is designed to directly respond to the intensity of sound.

As I said, it was a transcendental experience for me.

The festival continues tomorrow with workshops and more concerts. I am a full participant and will try to post daily.

You can link to the festival’s website from here.
You can read what I wrote about this festival last year by following the link at the end of this paragraph:

Budapest’s most avant-garde music festival, Making New Waves, was born seven years ago when Andrea Szigetváry participated in a workshop sponsored by the British Council. The experience was so fulfilling for the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy professor that she wanted to make it an annual event. The British Council supported her, and now the festival has an established and growing audience. 21. February, 2005 Festival to be more than a feel-good experience