From Scratch Archive .: The Group .: Global Hockets (1997/1998)

Global Hockets (1997/1998)

Global Hockets: Supreme Particles From Scratch (1997/98)
A dialogue of interlocking pattern & rhythm in sound/image, analogue/digital, acoustic/electronic.

"The music is dramatic, powerful, energetic and exciting. As an extended composition, Global Hockets is an unqualified success". Brian Marley. Avant/UK 2000

Supreme Particles / Germany
Michael Saup - composer, software, video
Anna Saup - video
Anne Niemetz - video
Tricky Chris – live mix
Steffen Cramer - objects
From Scratch / Auckland, NZ
Phil Dadson - composer/performer, sound & 3D design
Shane Currey - musician/performer
Adrian Croucher -musician/performer
Darryn Harkness - musican/performer/sampling

Technical
Michael Hodgson - interactive audio
Chris Gee - sound
Grant Collie - lighting

A From Scratch / Supreme Particles collaboration, aiming from the outset to create a conversation between image and sound, digital/analogue, electronic and acoustic, with video/computer projections interactively affected by analogue live performance. The 'hocketing' concept was applied equally to the computer imagery and the music/sound, marrying the interactive visual environment to the physicality of the live performance and spatial hocketing. A full complement of FromScratch instruments plus the new metal-pronged "Nunndrum", Bassdrum/bell stations, and triggered samples.

GLOBAL HOCKETS was premiered at The NZ Festival of Arts 1998 with the support of Creative New Zealand, the Goethe Institut, Silicon Graphics International, Campus Computers/Ak, and Rockshops/NZ. During ’98, From Scratch toured to Europe for performances in Hungary . . Budapest, Zeged, Godollo and Eger, and later to Linz, Austria for Ars Electronica, the MilkWeg / Amsterdam for The Worldwide Video Festival, and to the Mousonturm in Frankfurt.

Review of Global Hockets by Andreas Obst. Frankfurter Allgameine Zeitung. 5 October 1998.

What one sees on the stage one can hear. No electric tricks; that is the leading principle of the NZ percussion ensemble "From Scratch". It plays, however, in a quite different league from the English rock group "Queen". Their sound has not been heard before. Not even as an idea or vision. "Global Hockets" is the name of the program. It developed in collaboration with the Frankfurt computer and video artist Michael Saup. A remote controlled small vehicle that goes backwards and forwards in circles like a goblin on the stage while the audience is being seated, is a visible reference to the restlessness of modern times.

The stage is filled with puzzling constructions. Larger than a man, a labrynth of rhythm; various percussion instruments, bells etc are joined together by a grid-like device. Plastic tubes in a long succession reach from playing height to the floor. There are cast metal handbells grouped on a table. Bent metal rods grow out of an iron body like spines. The light is very low, from loudspeaker boxes one hears noises such as at nighttime in a primeval jungle. The young performers appear noiselessly on the stage, position themselves in front of the instruments and begin to swing from left to right and back from right to left in unison. This lasts several minutes while the primeval forest noise continues.

Then: a powerful blow breaks the silence. It is followed by an almost hour long thunder storm of drums which ends almost as abruptly as it began. What you hear in between is hard to believe, if one could not see it at the same time. The four performers constitute a magnificent human machine of rhythm. It is sensational how their drumming creates melodies. Sounds and noise becomes music and a wondrous world of sounds develop. This is in great part due to the virtuosity of the musicians (performers) and partly due to the virtues and sound qualities of the materials with which they work. Materials from the building trade - wood, metal, PVC, and a sink of water; metal sounds different in water. That too is part of the experience of this performance. And what beautiful tones are created when a piece of wood rotates over their heads!

But the whole is much more in "From Scratch" than the individual components. Breathless admiration and amazement at the performance of the four musicians. And afterwards pure rapture. Andreas Obst.

GH exists in two forms : the collaboration between groups, and a purely sound performance / lighting version staged alone by From Scratch.

A video - released 2000, and CD - released ’99 - document the work.
See also - http://www.supreme.de.