Sound @ OneEmptySpace [ Megan England ]

MPG
Mobile Performance Group

Video || Audio || Pictures
Under construction

"Mobile Performance Group is a collective of new media artists interested in finding new ways to present art outside of traditional venues." (from mobileperformancegroup.com) The founder and creative director is Matt Roberts, head of the Digital Arts Department at Stetson University. Nathan Wolek, head of the Music Technology program at Stetson, is the music director. Select students in the Digital Arts and Music Technology programs are chosen to perform with MPG. Typically, there are two student visual performers and two student audio performers.

MPG in its current form is referred to as the Parking Spaces Project. The group travels to the location of the performance several days early to collect audio and visual material. We wander the city recording interesting sights and sounds, using field recorders, contact microphones, shotgun microphones, digital cameras, and much more. The day before the performance, we pour through the material and cut it up; on the audio side, we cut and organize the sounds into percussion, pitched percussion, event sounds, ambient sounds, speech, and cycles to drive wavetable synthesis.

Each member of MPG is responsible for building their own performance interface in the Max/MSP programming environment. The performance itself is completely improvised using these Max patches and the collected media. An MPG performance can last anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 or 4 hours, and can either remain in one location or move from space to space using our mobile shopping cart setup. The visualists project their performance onto inflatable screens, blank walls, empty parking lots, and anything else the image will show up on. The audio performers are heard over car stereo speakers strapped to the shopping carts, which can be aimed in any direction. Musical styles range far and wide, though MPG typically incorporates elements of popular electronica into their experimental improvisation to draw passerbys into the performance space.

In April of 2007, MPG released a student-produced 4 track EP entitled "The Invention of the Wheel". Each track has both an audio and visual component. The tracks were produced by two-person teams, typically an audio specialist and a visual specialist. Each team was assigned a recording of a live MPG performance to form the base idea for the track.

Website, images, and sound are all © 2007 Megan England unless otherwise noted.

MPG Mobile Performance Group Video \|\| Audio \|\| Pictures Under construction "Mobile Performance Group is a collective of new media artists interested in finding new ways to present art outside of traditional venues." (from mobileperformancegroup.com) The founder and creative director is Matt Roberts, head of the Digital Arts Department at Stetson University. Nathan Wolek, head of the Music Technology program at Stetson, is the music director. Select students in the Digital Arts and Music Technology programs are chosen to perform with MPG. Typically, there are two student visual performers and two student audio performers. MPG in its current form is referred to as the Parking Spaces Project. The group travels to the location of the performance several days early to collect audio and visual material. We wander the city recording interesting sights and sounds, using field recorders, contact microphones, shotgun microphones, digital cameras, and much more. The day before the performance, we pour through the material and cut it up; on the audio side, we cut and organize the sounds into percussion, pitched percussion, event sounds, ambient sounds, speech, and cycles to drive wavetable synthesis. Each member of MPG is responsible for building their own performance interface in the Max/MSP programming environment. The performance itself is completely improvised using these Max patches and the collected media. An MPG performance can last anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 or 4 hours, and can either remain in one location or move from space to space using our mobile shopping cart setup. The visualists project their performance onto inflatable screens, blank walls, empty parking lots, and anything else the image will show up on. The audio performers are heard over car stereo speakers strapped to the shopping carts, which can be aimed in any direction. Musical styles range far and wide, though MPG typically incorporates elements of popular electronica into their experimental improvisation to draw passerbys into the performance space. In April of 2007, MPG released a student-produced 4 track EP entitled "The Invention of the Wheel". Each track has both an audio and visual component. The tracks were produced by two-person teams, typically an audio specialist and a visual specialist. Each team was assigned a recording of a live MPG performance to form the base idea for the track. Website, images, and sound are all © 2007 Megan England unless otherwise noted.