Simon Tarr’s unconventional show mixes audio, visuals
Thousands of people travel to Carnegie Hall in Midtown Manhattan each year to hear the sounds of the New York Philharmonic and other highly touted acts. But Friday’s audience not only had the opportunity to hear talent — They could visualize it.
USC associate art professor Simon Tarr has been making eclectic film shows for the past decade, which eventually landed him the ultimate gig: performing at Carnegie Hall this weekend.
Instead of using an instrument or his voice, Tarr harnessed the power of imagery to captivate his audience.
His work has been shown all over the world, and Tarr said he was eager to bring his art to the same venue as thousands of talented acts.
“It was pretty exciting,” Tarr said. “Carnegie Hall is pretty famous for classical music, and it was a classical music concert. It was definitely a very strange work.”
Though the audience viewed the performance as a movie, the process couldn’t have been more different, as Tarr used the visuals on his laptop as his instruments.
“Rather than playing a film that’s finished when it’s over, one of the things that I do is put together shows and performances, and I play the video like a musician would play,” he said.
Tarr’s visual components were accompanied by the musical composition of Dan Visconti. When the two aspects came together, the piece, entitled “Glitchscape,” was born.
“I was collaborating with [Visconti], and we worked together to build this big piece,” Tarr said. “Both the music and the visual tried to explore the aesthetics of what happens when things break and fall apart. It looks like it’s collapsing in on itself.”
To create his pieces, Tarr uses VDMX, a program designed for manipulating live video and audio, along with his own processes that alter the visuals.
“I take a camera and shoot just like anybody making a movie would, and then I do a lot of animating to create the shots,” he said. “I have to write a little bit of software, also. I write filters and effects that will alter the way the video behaves.”
Like many other performances Carnegie Hall has hosted, Tarr was on stage with a full orchestra. But alongside the traditional harps and flutes, a few unconventional instruments were thrown into the mix.
“In addition to the typical orchestra, there were also broken toys that were used to make noise,” he said.
After the performance, Tarr said he was pleased with his New York City debut.
“The audience gave a great response,” he said. “It was pretty great.”