This multi-layered approach to performance
doesn't seek to overwhelm, but rather to engage, and even draw on, the audience's
own imagination. More akin to an animated children's book than to a modern
television/film type of production, these works intentionally leave empty
space. Inside these spaces are where the viewer is gently asked to step
in.
These works are encoded into several layers.
The first layer is musical (both performers have a long history as musician/composers.)
Using unorthodox instrumentation and a fully immersive quadraphonic audio
system, the musical language is created especially for interacting with
other layers within the works.
A second layer is visual, with moving and
still imagery gliding across the screen, sometimes reinforcing one of
the other layers and sometimes building upon it's own story. Some pieces
link the manipulation of the visual imagery, in real-time, to the performers
movements and musical instruments. A third layer is the story/text line. This
dimension appears sometimes as preformed spoken word, and sometimes as
pieces of text that emerge on the screen through, and around, the imagery.
Not all of these dimensions are always present.
Since the audience is asked to assimilate many different elements simultaneously,
Quodia has craftily used each of these dimensions in their most efficient
manner.
The result being that when a purely musical
element comes to the forefront, one or more of the other layers retreats,
giving way as needed. Each layer, in turn, is given its moment to come
forward.
The interplay between elements in each layer
and in between the layers themselves creates a unique effect upon audience
members. Their experience of these works comes from their own re-combining
of the elements, internally. Ultimately, this process turns the
audience's observational mechanism inward, encouraging them to engage
their own innate creative being.
Combining sophisticated, high technology
with the power of an ancient mythology, Quodia aim to pass on the energy
of imagination.