This was a big day. Jan at Bedford Creative Arts had been organising equipment setting up and de-rigging for the event on dec 8th - which had been made particularly complicated because we were not able to set up in the morning of the day of the event… Jan had got Bubbles Lighting on the case – who proved to be worth their weight in gold!  

We had a chance to get into St Cuthbert’s Hall early on Tuesday 4th… so – 1:30pm – Peter from Bubbles rigged a projector and an infrared camera on the ceiling   - which he made light work of!... If I haven’t already mentioned this, then I had decided to use a projector and camera to track the singers positions so they could leave trails of light wherever they walk. This is something I have done before – using a patch made in Open Frameworks programmed by Damian Stewart, adapted for this scenario with a max patch by Matt Olden. I thought the projected light trails would further enhance the ideas of ‘echoing’ locations. (although I had to break it to the choir that I wanted them to wear pingpong balls on their heads to hide infrared LEDs inside.. !!)

A bit later in the afternoon, Kerry Andrew came along to rehearse with the guitarist Ben Salmons. As Kerry will be performing a solo set as her ‘You Are Wolf’ act at the event, she agreed to do a duet with Ben, Kerry on vocals with the Bat Box – and Ben making textures on the guitar. They made some great sounds – I’m really looking forward to hearing what they do on the night…. 

Next – the choir arrived for their FINAL rehearsal in the space!  Very exciting : )  After some advice from Andy Keep I had decided to relax the structure of the performance a bit – by showing 3 short exercises to show what we had been working on – and leaving the more detailed ‘scores’ I had been making.  I really felt it was necessary to continue to give the choir time out to just experiment and get used to the Bat Box, because they had not had much time with them. The boxes are still not the right interface – this still needs to be developed …
The rehearsal went well – and we worked out the 3 exercises with some really nice moments at the beginnings and endings … 

These were the ‘behaviours’ we worked with are these..

Section – 1a
Guitar starts with a drone sound
Movement – divide into two opposite lines, and move to and from your opposite partner. Change speeds and take pauses between movements so you are moving at different time to the other pairs
Sound – choose a note from the guitar drone for your vocal sample. Next movement choose a note one above or below your previous note. Change octaves whenever you like.
Section 1b
Guitar sound drops out
Movement – move to and from your opposite partner, but instead of continuing, make decisions to stop at certain distances – and enjoy the rhythmic interplay between your note repeat and you partner’s
Sound – same instruction as 1a
Ending – everyone gradually returns to the 2 lines and stays there. Gradually turn down the note length of your sample so the repeated vocal samples become shorter and shorter leaving lots of silence and staccato sparse rhythms. Fade out in turn.

Section 2  (NB – change note length back to half way)
Movement – clusters. Decide to either be in a cluster – or to try and find space. You need to negotiate with others to make clusters, which can be of any amount of other.
Sound – all unvoiced sounds, starting with shhh and sss, moving to a percussive sound tz, ng, k, p, and clicks and pops. 
Ending – blow directly into the mic (creating a distorted noise), as everyone has moved to this sound form a cluster all together in the centre of the space, all facing inwards. Gradually turn down the note length until it is a short ‘pop’ and on Roger’s signal, everyone turn around to face outwards  - causing the note repeat rate to become much longer.

Section 3
Improvise in the space with the box, find moments to collaborate, and moments to play and enjoy exploiting the possibilities.
To finish, all come back into the centre, and then slowly move out into a large circle – still facing each other.

I think it this rehearsal went really well, and we are all agreed on the structure now, and have been through it all.. it seems to all feel very doable, and I'm really excited about the performance on Saturday.

Unfortunately it was still very cold at St Cuthbert’s so we did finish a little early… we have been promised they will switch on the BIG HEATER on Saturday... fingers crossed !