New Horizons in Experimental Music

05/05/20

by Elise Barrington

As a part of Quarantine Times, Lumpen Radio has taken the shows and sounds typically recorded in the studio and/or performed in our event space to the live streaming world of Twitch . This past Saturday, May 2nd, as a part of the Live Concerts with Lumpen Radio series, Jeremiah Chiu organized a lineup of live performances by DJ OBS, Stephie’s Castle, Patrick Shirioshi, Spectralina, and Lil' Jürg Frey.

The Twitch stream broadcasted artists from around the country, showcasing performance and music made in quarantine. And it was the official after party for the Common Field 2020 Convening Conference. The night ended with a standout performance by Lil' Jürg Frey (Dicky Bahto, Erika Bell, Morgan Gerstmar, Stephanie Smith) inside the world of Animal Crossing. 

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the newest installment of the life simulation game by Nintendo. Users can befriend a community of anthropomorphic animals, plant flowers, dig for fossils, create a home, and take on increasing debt from a raccoon landlord, all in real time.

The members of Lil' Jürg Frey tested the sonic elements of the game using instruments, household objects, outfit changes, and avatar reactions. What resulted was a five-part experimental score taking place within four rooms in a virtual home.

Interested in the process and conceptual ideas behind Lil' Jürg Frey’s performance, I decided to ask them some questions.

Quarantine Times Editor Elise Barrington: Why Animal Crossing?

Morgan Gerstmar: It’s fun and adorable! 
 
You quickly learn that some items play sound when you interact with them, and there seems to be no limit to how many objects can be firing at the same time, so it’s a perfect platform for experimental music. While we can’t control what pitches each object plays, we can control the frequency and dynamics (by changing the viewing angle). Some objects need to be started and stopped, some just make one sound, some might make different sounds but only once. There are also endless items in the game, many with unique sounds, and you can be a total noob and get amazing items a seasoned player doesn’t have yet. For instance, I got a pedal harp the other day (for 130k bells!). I’m a violist and violinist, so I’m hoping for the violin at some point. 
 
Besides the amazing sound interactions you can create, AC game play could be summed up as a millennial dreamworld that represents the life milestones we’re unlikely to reach as a generation. A key aspect to the game is that you take on debt to build your home and develop infrastructure around your island, but this debt is manageable and accumulating wealth is easy. This is something people under 40 will probably never experience. We were screwed by the recession in 2008, and now during our prime earning years we’re being hit again with another financial crisis. Besides, the escapism of visiting, and then moving to, a remote island is pretty on point for the shutdown in general; there’s also an airport that you can use to fly to visit mystery islands (to make some bells) and visit your real friends (provided they have a Nintendo online account). You do a lot of outdoor work, something we, people who live in cities, aren’t really able to do. I live in a soft story apartment building and we don’t have an outdoor space, so watering some virtual flowers outside feels pretty welcoming. The game has endless possibilities and, honestly, moves slowly (it follows real-time), so there’s always something to look forward to even after weeks and weeks of playing the game. 


Dicky Bahto: The game was definitely engrossing, and after shaking a tree and having a 16mm film projector fall out of it, I turned my house into an art gallery. I'm a visual artist and I work with analog motion picture film a lot, and I thought it was bizarre that the game gave me a film projector. Actually my friend Casey Anderson, who plays saxophone in real life, also almost immediately upon starting to play had a saxophone fall out of a tree, so we joked about how Nintendo knows what we actually do in real life and is trying to help us compensate for not being able to do these things in the world anymore.

Stephanie Smith: We were all playing the game anyway, and when Dicky brought up the idea, it felt really natural to do this in the game. One of the first items you get is an ocarina, so trying out musical ideas was really organic. Things got really fun when we started using non-musical instruments. In real life, we all compose a lot of music that doesn't use traditional instruments, so this was yet another way that the Animal Crossing environment felt like a natural place to experiment with sound in.

How did this performance come to be?

DB: The game also started giving me instruments, and I thought it would be fun to start a band. Stephanie, Erika, and Morgan took that idea seriously and we started experimenting with different objects that we could activate to make sounds. We came up with ideas for groupings of objects to house in a room, and then I would arrange them so that we could all move around and access the different objects. 

SS: We basically figured out how to coordinate everything on the fly. The tech part of it was all over the place (like Dicky described) and I had to use my laptop's webcam to film the TV that had my switch plugged into it. We really didn't get organized about it until we knew we had a show coming up. It's all been a really fun experience, though. Definitely one of my favorite things to come out of these dark times.

Thoughts on live streaming?

MG: It’s a great way to keep artists engaged, but it doesn’t really replace a live performance. Obviously, you can’t perform with others right now unless you live with them. The “Zoom delay” is really prohibitive for true interaction. AC really feels like performing in real time with someone, and the delay doesn’t feel as palpable. You actually see your avatar interact with other avatars, instead of just a face on a screen in front of you. In a lot of ways Lil Jürg Frey feels more like a live performance than watching a person or two perform over live steam. We really couldn’t perform this type of project any physically closer than we already are. 

DB: Also... I thought that I would be less nervous about performing in a video game, but I was wrong about that! [Laughter]

Lumpen Radio is excited to stream even more live experimental music on Twitch.tv/lumpenradio. Join WLPN 105.5 FM Lumpen Radio’s community radio station in the early days of its expansion into live streaming concerts, interviews, participatory advice shows and more! New live shows begin every Saturday and Sunday at 8PM CST.