Seite 156 [156]
OCR
SAMUEL BECKETT’S PLAY IN DIGITAL CULTURE: TECHNOLOGIES OF INFLUENCE use of cinematic language in the form of cuts, editing, multiple cameras, and offline sound design. Instead, the physical movement of the PTZ camera recontextualizes the interrogator within the context of new digital technologies and communication mediums, meaning that the sound world had to articulate a progression whereby the audience is seduced from the analogue into the digital. Thus, Blocks A and B had no associated sound design, using lighting and PTZ changes alone; in the da capo, when the audience (it was presumed) would have begun to settle into the new cinematic vocabulary, sound design was used to accentuate the physicality and presence of the PTZ camera as interrogator. Finally, at the conclusion of the piece, all visible elements were removed, with only the sound of the camera heard in isolation, suggesting the continuing hunting of the interrogator within the vacant darkness of the visible scene. This is a further reference back to the Ethica production, in which the “interrogator” light was active both during the pre-set and postset configurations, suggesting both that the audience might yet have their own turn inside the urn, and that “the inquirer (light) begins to emerge as no less a victim of his inquiry than they and as needing to be free, within narrow limits, literally to act the part, i.e. to vary if only slightly his speeds and intensities.”'? In Intermedial Play, the physical embodiment of the PTZ camera as interrogator using sound was achieved in a direct manner, without the use of pre-composed material. This was implemented using a contact microphone mounted on the PTZ unit which picked up the electromechanical sounds of the PTZ motors as the camera shifted from one pre-defined position to the next. This sound was then mixed with the actor’s dialogue, captured using three microphones mounted in each urn, and broadcast live alongside the video feed. The audio signal picked up directly from the PTZ unit via the contact microphone naturally matched the profile and gesture of the physical camera movements in a very real sense. However, when considered from the perspective of the audience, the high-frequency timbre of the small, electromechanical motors of the PTZ unit suggested an almost synthetic, electronic sound world, rather than the assumed weightiness of a physically moving camera. Drawing on techniques from electroacoustic composition, some live processing of the contact microphone signal was therefore introduced to achieve the desired timbre, while retaining the overall sonic shape and gesture of the PTZ motors. This was achieved by the real-time pitch-shifting of the contact microphone signal downward by two octaves, thereby suggesting a more plausible weightiness and less synthetic timbre. In addition, and for similar reasons, the pitch-shifted signal was also routed 155 Samuel Beckett to George Devine, 9 March 1964, The Letters, Vol. 3, 595.
