Escapee gloss : a symphony of polymedia

Escapee Gloss: A Symphony of Polymedia has explored the methods and meaning of polymedia processes through the composition and subsequent performance of a folio of interactive works, particularly a large seven-¬¨‚ↂÄövÑv™movement piece, Escapee Gloss. The creative work contained in the folio has been documented in musical and graphic scores and polymedia recordings, including my own performance as a clarinetist and polymedia artist and is contextualised and analysed in the accompanying exegesis. The feature work of the folio, Escapee Gloss, embodies a personal creative response to some old, used clarinets, irreparable and unplayable, and sundry discarded clarinet parts. It integrates these physically and emotionally into experiments with sound, art works, layering of light, reflections and manipulated art work and music in performance through multi-¬¨‚â†-channel audio and video mixing. The composition combines digitally processed clarinet sounds, live acoustic instruments (flute, Eb/Bb and bass clarinets, double bass and piano), live processed acoustic environmental sounds, props and projections. These components reinvent the disintegrated clarinets through video samples and stills of broken clarinet parts, grey pencil drawings, water footage and Japanese artwork. Escapee Gloss explores the possibilities of layering and reflections of light and texture in images and sound and deliberately referencing paint textures in the titles of the movements. The composition folio contains five other works: Hats, A Snapper is a Feast, Grainger's Bridge, A Song is Here and Blooms and Death. Each of these works present a single thematic idea which is realised in performance with acoustic and electronic art music, paintings, mixed media works on paper and wood, line drawings of notations, live interactive performance, traditional notation, improvisation and videos. In each case, polymedia processes and multi-¬¨‚â†-art forms cohere in live performance through a deliberate strategy of layering to represent the complexity and depth of the images we see and of the sounds we hear.