Muscle and Blood Piano (begun 2000)

Muscle and Blood Piano (2000-02) is a computer-based performance by Barbara Lattanzi which consists of improvised variations on the film "Nosferatu" (1922) by F.W. Murnau.

Performance duration: variable, 20 minutes or more.

Muscle and Blood Piano is a work of interactive cinema. Utilizing experimental software by Barbara Lattanzi, the cinema performance samples and mixes the film settings and the characters of "Nosferatu" - the vampire Count Orlock, the Agent Renfield, Jonathon and Mina Harker. The film characters are reanimated through improvised montage of shattered, low-resolution image fragments. Sound is sampled from "A Symphony of Horror" orchestral music composed by Hans Erdmann for Murnau's silent-era movie.

Barbara Lattanzi is currently Visiting Artist in Digital Media at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts (U.S.) Recent exhibitions of her work include the screening of several early films as part of the 1999-2000 Museum of Modern Art series "Big As Life: An American History of 8mm Films" and the on-line exhibition of digital multimedia work as part of the Rhizome "Artbase" collection of net art. Her cdrom, "wildernessPuppets", was included in the 9th New York Digital Salon. She premiered "Muscle and Blood Piano" at the Wisconsin Film Festival (2001). She has presented "Muscle and Blood Piano", experimental software for live performance, at the Wisconsin Film Festival, the 2001 "Ready to..." conference in Prague, Czech Republic; and the 2002 European Media Art Festival, Osnabruck, Germany. Her website - www.wildernesspuppets.net - includes downloadable "idiomorphic software" as well as interactive applets. An essay by Chris Hill on Lattanzi's recent work in relation to video archives will appear in the forthcoming issue of Millenium Film Journal.

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Performance duration: variable, 20 minutes or more.

Equipment supplied by Barbara Lattanzi:

• Dell PC laptop computer
• Samson audio mixer

Equipment supplied by Host:

• multimedia projector and screen
• cable (for connection between projector display and computer)
• audio amplification system
• audio speakers

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• A videotape (VHS, 22 min., NTSC) which demonstrates the performance of the Muscle and Blood Piano software is available upon request.
  
  
• Several short, interactive on-line shockwave applets which demo some visual aspects of the software include:
  "Startle", "The Letter and the Fly", "Here me! riff", "You are late", "Bridgecrossing" and "Embroidered".
  
  
• Still images from "Muscle and Blood Piano".
  Click picture to link to larger image size: 640x480: