EMERGENSIES COLLECTIVE

ECONOMY OF MEANS

Emergensies is a multidisciplinary media arts and music collective based in Toronto ON, originally formed in 2019. Our members are Yang Chen (percussion), Simone Northey (animation), and Adrienne Scott (animation). The name ‘Emergensies’ is a play on the career category of emerging artist, and a nod to the feeling of putting out fires while running our own shows.

Our project is structured around the composition for solo vibraphone Economy of Means by Robert Honstein, which is a contemporary work emphasizing the use of extended techniques and exploration of the vibraphone.

In our work we’ve paired music and animation, with a focus on modeling visual content after aural content. We produced animations through rotoscoping techniques to abstractly track the motion of performance, rather than to create a direct figurative copy. Economy of Means consists of 6 movements, out of which we have animated and recorded ‘Filigree’ and ‘Bow Lines’. The visual response to ‘Filigree’ is constantly evolving, and its current iteration is in part an effort to address the challenges of displaying live-performance with animation, and the balance between spontaneity and coordination. The animation for ‘Bow Lines’ was created to follow and expand on Yang’s gestures while performing, while visually connecting to the bright tones and static vibrations of tinfoil on the vibraphone. This animation is presented in tandem with Yang performing ‘Bow Lines’.

This project was originally conceived as a live multimedia performance, and was reconfigured over the course of the pandemic and residency to exist as a recording. Our work is situated in the broader context of widespread live music and arts event cancellations during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as our ability to present an eventual live product remains in limbo. Despite this, we find a connection between Honstein’s intent in composing Economy of Means to “make the most out of limited resources”1 in using only the vibraphone and minimal objects to create a maximal range of sounds, and our pivot to working within our own restrictions of a long-distance working arrangement, while meeting an audience in isolation.

The videos we are presenting here are milestones of our exploration in creating and refining the presentation of our work.