It's my experience that an active engaged audience will help produce a superior performance. Art is all about communication. When art lovers are lined up five or six deep around "Garden of Earthly Delights" they are partaking of the spiritual power of that work. When a member of the Castro Theater audience stood up and screamed during the burlesque in "Nosferatu", that intensity was both feedback for the performers and permission to go farther. As the opening character in Fellini's "Amacord" raptuously declares, "It Circulates!". It's the ability to find new meaning that keeps the audience engaged. In an interactive work, the audience makes a decision and the artwork responds, often quite overtly, with new meaning. Presently with games, it's a new set of enemies or a new environment or puzzle; but in the artwork of the future, it may be become an intimate dance with the brain, enhancing creativity, uncovering buried emotions and memories. So if it could happen in games, why not in opera? In my opera "godmachine", each member of the audience is furnished with a ping-pong paddle which is painted black on one side and white on the other. The audience is asked a series of questions, which they answer by presenting the white side of the paddle towards the stage if they agree, the black side if they disagree. The relative luminousity is recorded by a camera and the data is relayed to a computer running MAX. The program gives the antagonists different weights derived from the audience's responses and changes the plot accordingly. It's my intention to have each performance subtlely different in meaning based upon the psychology of the audience involved.

Interest in Synesthesia?

Synesthesia is a vast topic.  It includes approaches to orchestration and instrument building. It draws attention to the physical effects of sound (both to humans and environment). It has liberated music from many of the limitations of the human body.

I first became interested in synthesis through orchestration, where the density of sound works in a different way than it does in acoustic or electroacoustic instruments. I admired Kraftwerk and I admired Brian Eno's work with David Bowie, and after taken technology courses at College of Marin, I began working for Serge Modular in San Francisco.

The vast world of synthetic sound exploded my concept of music. The Serge Modular gear was as the name says: modular, with rows of knobs and a jungle of multicolored patchcords, but without a standard keyboard. Very often the sounds which gurgled up from the id of the machine resembled the unimaginable mating cries of demented sea monsters.

Although I did perform shows at Bay Area museums with my rig, I true interest was to invent my own machine. I desired to find a way to control my newly obtained Casio M-10 with a control voltage from the Serge. Eventually I developed a way to frequency modulate the clock rate with a control voltage, producing a further astonishing array of sound. I was also taking video game sound chips and subjecting them to similar mutilation. My clients for these machines included Throbbing Gristle, Don Preston (Mothers of Invention) Tuxedo Moon, Eric Drew Feldman (Captain Beefheart), and John Adams.The Residents bought three which they used prominently in their "Tales of Two Cities" and "The Mole Show" tours and recordings.

During the fall of 1983, I went on a European tour with Snakefinger and it wasn't until well into the next year that I returned. It was a new world and it seemed that everywhere Bohemia was in retreat. Everyone wanted me to retrofit their Casios with MIDI, which I wasn't very interested in at that time. I put aside my interest in synthesizers.

Are samples and sampling considered "synesthia"? Most of my movie scores contain compositions totally built from samples. If MIDI drives an pipe organ riff ("Nosferatu") to superhuman speeds, is that "synesthia"?

I revisited synthetic sounds when I worked for Atari Games during the 1990's. Again I was intrigued by the orchestral possiblity of the sounds, how transparent the oscillators could sound, how the innocent sine wave 808 kick could have so much power in a mix. Synesthesia has changed me and changed the world, but there is precious little time for demented sea creatures.