Thursday, 11 February 2010 05:25

My heart skipped a beat when I saw that Plastikman is returning behind the decks this year. Richie Hawtins alter ego Plastikman will debut at the Time Warp festival in Mannheim, Germany.

Hawtin will let us experience (yet again) an amazing combination between Plastikman's electronic performance together with top of the line visual support.

Visual architects Derivative supported Plastikmans performance at MUTEK 2004 with their powerful software tool TouchDesigner. This tool enables Richie to orchestrate sound an visual compositions generatively and in real time.

This year it's going to be even more breathtaking. The current generation of TouchDesigner 077 has a built in bridge between Richie's Ableton Live rig and Derivatives TouchDesigner. Ali Demirel, Hawtin's visual artist has been working closely with Derivatives Jarrett Smith and Markus Heckmann, to create the content and a custom performing interface for the shows.

The Plastikman LIVE show combines everything they've experienced and learned from the Hawtin/Demirel shows, into a new highly concentrated one-hour experience.

Reinterpreting the 18 year history of Hawtin's Plastikman material, Plastikman LIVE guides you through the acidic atmospheres of 'Sheet One' to the funk of 'Musik', into the deeper sides of 'Consumed'.

Plastikman LIVE will be a fusion of the past and future, the visual and audible, between performer and audience, of expectations and anticipation. Which will create the ultimate Plastikman experience.

“It has always fascinated me how sound, lighting, visuals and human interactivity define and deepen a concert experience By focusing on my own unique Plastikman sound I hope to find new freedom and explore the extremes of where these elements converge, challenging our senses, stimulating our memories, and creating an experience of physical and mental intensity that can be only Plastikman.” - Richie Hawtin, January 2010

Good to know:

Another Hawtin/Minus/Derivative collaboration invites the community to create their own visuals to original Plastikman tracks using TouchDesigner. Hawtin and Derivative have packaged and made available for download a complete toolset that includes a purpose-built TouchDesigner synth and 4 Plastikman tracks enabling participants with full support to produce visuals in the same real-time generative environment as the show's. Winning entries are to be incorporated into the live events.

Source: 365Mag