25 April
Ars Electronica Show - Lynn Bechtold
La Cupula Gallery
Córdoba, Argentina
Violinist Lynn Bechtold performs Procrustean Bed, by Melissa Grey & Nicole Antebi, a music and animation collaboration.
Created by composer Melissa Grey and artist-animator Nicole Antebi for Lynn Bechtold & Composers Concordance. Performed by Lynn Bechtold [violin] & Melissa Grey [live processing, Merlin]; at San Diego Central Library Auditorium, CA, 2016.04.08 [world premiere]
Procrustean Bed, a performance for violin(s), Merlin, and live processing, with animation by the artist Nicole Antebi, is a collaborative work based on the myth of Procrustes, the subduer, the stretcher, the rogue metalworker who either cut or stretched his guests’ legs to fit the specific size of an iron bed. The phrase is used in several disciplines to convey an arbitrary standard to which exact conformity is forced. Merlin, performed by Melissa Grey, is a handheld computer game from the late 1970s that was one of the earliest digital sequencers. In Music Machine mode, there is a limit of 48 pitches. This constraint is subdued or stretched to fit our procrustean bed.