We recorded a new piece today in the Bath Spa University TV studios, following the session last year with Bastard Assignments. As part of our developing series of videos of new work, we filmed Luke Nickel’s Transcribing, a piece written originally for Parkinson Saunders and premiered at the Wellcome Collection in London in October, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3’s Hear and Now.
Today the performers were Alex Mah and James Saunders. The piece involves the players transcribing a recording played on headphones, with keyboard controls that allow them to track back through the audio to check their work. Both players do this simultaneously, with the looped audio being audible to the audience and the typed text projected on to screens. In the first performance, differences in transcription speeds led to the performers finishing eight minutes apart, but today Alex and James were a little more evenly matched.
We will post the video here once it has been edited, and are currently planning some new sessions for later in the year.
