I just uploaded a stream of my soloY2K5 performance. (Thanks to Rainier for recording and KD via Kris Hartung for letting me know it existed.) The performance was created with an Ernieball Stingray V fretless, Echoplex EDP, Ableton Live, and assorted effects like a Zoom 505 and EBS octave divider. The loops I triggered in Ableton, were created in Cecilia and were comprised of the 30 second "Giantrobot" theme intro, followed by a woman saying "jigou jitoku" translated from Japanese as "You get what you deserve" (which was subsequently turned into a 10 minute drone and kind of reminds me of Gyorgy Ligeti’s music, Lux Aeterna, Requiem, or Atmospheres, which were used in the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey). Allow me to put on my art hat for a moment: I used this drone as a springboard for improvisation and upon listening back, I felt that the works output and process evoke the ironic feeling of isolation, aloneness, and helplessness, one has when “trapped” inside various types of machines even though they are our own constructs and designs. This is irregardless as to whether or not these are social (cliques, political parties, religion) or physical (automobiles, computers, government run offices (think INS or DMV), the planet) conditions. These are also despite the fact of the symbiotic relations of the individual’s own contribution to; or use of (consciously or unconsciously), the machines themselves. These ideas are manifested in this performance by the fact that the Machine, a combination of my laptop running Ableton synched to my Echoplex controls sounds and yet, is controlled by me. I am alone with the machine, a paradox and a symbiotic relationship. Bass sounds get recorded, or trapped, inside of the Echoplex, a machine, and are recycled around and manipulated by machine functions, which I control, but with limitations to the items functionality (the machines control). Though I am stimulated to dialogue from the machines output, the sound coming out would not exist without me. I am conversing with the machine yet I am still alone. Paradox. The machine is me. I am the machine. Symbiosis, or maybe even Cyborg?