Wrongheaded have been playing together for at least twenty minutes. They were formed from a merger of Yee-King and Nilson, for the express purpose of exploring the cross-domain of on-the-fly computing, music, dance, and costumed theatre.
The proponents usually operate their bodies and computers at the mercy of live coded instructions, experimenting in algorithmic choreography. Live coding is a performative act which places programming software at the conceptual heart of a live show. None the less, the virtual world spills out to the physical; and by combining instructions for human action with instructions for sound and visuals, we can unify human action and computation. The performance combines contemporary dance, electronic music, and a theatrical reflection on ubiquitous computing.
Previous performances have included the Royal Festival Hall ballroom as part of the London Jazz Festival, a planetarium in Plymouth, and a London pub event covered by BBC and ABC news crews.
Tonight’s show will involve a virtual Matthew, and a real Click.
The audience may be invited to join in, but should follow any instructions carefully, lest they hurt anyone’s feelings.
Wrongheaded are Matthew Yee-King and Click Nilson.
Click Nilson emerged from the Swedish algorithmic music scene in the mid 1970s with his groundbreaking piece “An Instructional Game for 1 to many musicians”. This piece, whilst entirely unreliant on digits, formed a key part of techniques – alongside work of other pioneering artists such as Sol Lewitt and the Alan Turing Five – that formed the basis of what has today become the production of software in a live performative context – i.e., livecoding.
Matthew Yee-King was born in 1975. He went to secondary school with other Rephlex etc artists Tom Jenkinson (Squarepusher) and Jordan Muscott (Railway Raver). In a band with these two as well as Graham Gatheral (later in a duo with yee-king called Bavin) and James Stephenson (Chungking + Jack Sparrow), he learned to play drums. He also began to compose electronic music with his Amiga. By now he is a bonafide live coder.