Ensemble Improvisation and Moving-image in the Zoom-welt

Following the UK lockdown, March 2020, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) coordinated by Prof. Raymond MacDonald (Reid School of Music, Edinburgh University) began a collaboration with Prof. Ross Birrell (The Glasgow School of Art), an artist with long experience working with musicians and moving image in site-specific contexts. The collaborative project which emerged was titled ‘flattening the curve’and involved recording weekly Zoom ensemble improvisations to develop new music and moving image works. Working with Dr Jessica Argo (Sound for Moving Image, GSA) and musician and PhD Researcher, Maria Sappho Donohue (University of Huddersfield) and supported by GSA Covid-Response funding for recording and archiving, GIO incorporated the functions and affordances of Zoom software into the production of a series of audio-visual improvisations which have expanded to include over 80 musicians worldwide. The resulting music and moving-image works, collaboratively produced by GIO and edited and re-mixed by Birrell, have been screened in music and performance festivals across the globe. For members of GIO experiencing lockdown, Zoom offered a site for maintaining musical community and fertile ground for the production of innovative, ensemble improvisations. Equally so, as a new site of production, Zoom expands the territory of site-specific moving image. Drawing upon Michel Serres’ notion of parasite, the ‘errant ecology’ of Édouard Glissant, and Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of ‘Umwelt’, this presentation frames the emergent relationship between GIO ensemble of musicians and Birrell as film-maker, as one of ‘host’ and ‘parasite’, in a digital ecology here considered as ‘Zoom-welt’ (Zumwelt)