Sonica: Palimpsest @ Tramway

Four robots, two artists and one large drawing space, illuminated on the floor. A projector in the ceiling casts images upon the floor and the artists respond to the projections through their drawing. The robots respond to the drawing as their spinning sensors run over the lines of graphite, feeding back into a bank of computers to produce a score of beeps, crackles and pops. 

Daniel Skoglund and Kathy Hinde are effectively composing music in a kind of binary notation for a quartet of robotic musicians. Occasionally they shift the robots and dart across to the bank of computers, adjusting (usually increasing) the volume and supplementing their efforts with rhythmic and harmonic loops that help to fill the otherwise sparse 'audio-visual environment.'

The projected light reflects onto the faces of the audience, who sit poised in a rectangle, their forefingers pressed into their cheeks. Among the audience sits your humble critic, feeling guilty because besides him sits his date, who, he can tell, isn't enjoying herself.

The first 15 minutes of the performance are interesting enough but once you've figured out the various elements it fails to rise above the sum of those parts. First, the projector casts an outline of two figures drawing, which the artists obediently trace. Following this are projections of a map, ants, crowds of people (looking like ants), drops of rain, clouds, leaves and birds – nature, in short.

For each projection the artists compose music that mimics the sound of the natural subject. This works, but it all sounds a bit generic. Finally, they turn off their computer bank, switch off their robots and say, "That's it." A rather anticlimactic ending to an installation with some interesting themes and techniques. [Peter Drew]