XORKO.COM ΦΕΣΤΙΒΑΛ PROMO 2013 from Marinos Chrysanthou on Vimeo.

This August I was lucky enough to perform alongside other great artists such as Sobamonk, The Black Post Project, Mohama Tayalof, Alex Tomb, Cotsios O Pikatillis (ABR), Alex Mackay, Mescalido, DJ Magos, Franko (IOD), Dimikan and RAW SILVER just to name a few; at the Xorko.com collaborative art festival, a two day surreal paradise that took place in Arminou.

I instantly realized that this was my best opportunity to try the live performance setup I had in mind for a while now.
With an Ableton Live set stretched over 23 MIDI device tracks, that included a collection of drum racks, analog and operator synthesizers, step sequencer and many other instruments. Parameters like sends, effects, synth filters mapped on almost every controller that I own. All this was to be accompanied by visuals programmed in Processing. Of course everything went the rough way, I had to restart twice on stage to get everything working apart from the visuals, and even then while I was playing, Ableton decided to hide my mouse cursor, rendering any mouse oriented operation almost impossible. I had to align the mouse to the specific track from the Windows Task bar where the mouse cursor re-appeared and then click my way up until I managed to find the right parameter.

Photo by Peter Eramian

The visuals are real time rendered graphics programmed in Processing. They are MIDI synced with Ableton and listen for three tracks. The MIDI notes from the kicks are forwarded to Processing and invert the colors, the snare notes trigger a change in the geometry shapes and also the Line In audio signal scales and morphs the geometry according to volume levels. I also have one more MIDI track with clips that change the whole visual “scene”. Here is a scaled down demonstration of the setup.