HyperSoundMasher was a collaborative piece with Dan Westake; a live digital performance instrument that enabled the simultaneous sampling of a four randomly generated, recently uploaded, YouTube videos to be sonically merged, mixed, manipulated and mashed, creating a unique improvised audio/visual collage in real-time.
"In the Digital Age the ability to sample and the availability of innumerable soft instruments, recording environments and audio manipulation tools means the prime challenge of music makers today is how to cut a clear path through this jungle of options. Just as choosing a toothpaste in a supermarket containing a thousand brands is harder than in a the corner shop stocking a dozen, advanced capitalisms ‘oppression of choice ‘ is problematic to the creative process as all good art requires formal limitations be it choice be of media, or source material.
With this is mind I developed, along with my colleague Paul Abbott, The HyperSoundMasher, an online digital performance instrument enabling the live simultaneous sampling of a four randomly generated, recently uploaded, YouTube videos to be sonically merged, mixed, manipulated and mashed, creating a unique improvised audio/visual collage in real-time. Inspired by the fundamentals of the two golden periods of post-modern music, where limit technology was pushed to its creative limits, we have limited our sonic pallet to Hip-Hop’s use of looped samples and Dub-Reggae’s use of delay and frequency manipulation. This enables a non-linear narrative to develop as relationships form between the four separate visual channels as their sound tracks merge, mash and amalgamate in a process of transmogrification."
– Dan Westlake
