The Latest From Lumpens: Projection, Piano, And Breakdancing

In the context of performance, digital media plays an important role in creating a sense of illusion, making the impossible possible, and giving visual properties to otherwise invisible entities. Lately we’ve seen many visual artists focus their attentions on the performance sector to create collaborative, multi-disciplinary work that merges together different practices and creative approaches to create performance based experiences that feel entirely new.

One such experiment is A4, a multimedia performance that features Korean pianist Jin Wook Lee and the collaborative visuals of Lumpens and Octamin. Opening with a black backdrop and a free-floating white sheet in the foreground, the performance pairs projection with live piano improvisation, synchronizing the audio-reactive visuals with the experimental music composition. Each pizzicato chord struck by the pianist seems seems to pluck at the undulating sheet. Several minutes into the performance, the pianist uses a golf ball to demonstrate the prepared piano technique first coined and popularized by experimental composer John Cage, placing the golf ball between or on the piano strings to alter the timbre. With gradual progression, Lee moves into Henry Cowell’s string piano technique, directly playing on the strings of his piano and entangling the sheet in nebulous confusion with this avant-garde approach.