Digital: bridge it all

<p>Using the context of my work with the European Bridges Ensemble since 2006, I wish to describe a trajectory (line of flight) from instrumental musician (bass player) through video/film-maker to live performer of moving image (an imagician?) This represents an idealised arc that is constantly brought down to earth by the exigencies of using permanent beta software and the network as it exists presently. I wish to make particular reference to The Choir and The Chaos a piece commissioned by the Ensemble from composer/artist Fredrik Olofsson, in which the performers' attempts to perform together as an ensemble are increasingly undermined by random bursts of noise and distortion. The piece is an articulate metaphor for the precariously balanced state in which computer network performance currently occurs. For me, the permanent imminence of sudden, abrupt disruption of communication is a new articulation of the sublime; the ridiculous sublime. This is an ongoing area of research in which the lapse, the ellipsis, the lacuna, the severance of (human)communication becomes ever more probable and problematic in the context of increasing mediation.</p>