Cryptic Nights

 

The lines between technology and the arts are blurring at an astronomical pace: the latest laptops and computers position themselves not only as tools for business, but as home entertainment centres where anything seems possible.

J Simon van der Walt, performing as part of the Cryptic Nights season, parallels this revolution yet takes it back to the ‘Bare Wires’. As Edward ‘Teddy’ Edwards and the Electr-O-Chromatic orchestra, he presents an electronic symphony of music and performance.

Van der Walt’s imagination takes us on a technologically devised musical journey with improvisation, composition and electro-junk. His passion as a performer, actor, director and composer is apparent, and he strives to blend musicality, innovation and theatricality into one.

Luckily, Cryptic’s creative drive lies in a similar field, making the Cryptic Nights season a perfect match for the composer. He arrestingly combines his “creative misuse of technology”, such as text-to-screetch (the warping of standard computer text-to-speech software), with reverting back to his childhood use of electronic junk as instruments. This piece could reinvent the way we experience music, and its place in a modern society. The electronic age is vibrantly creative, and with ‘Bare Wires’ the performing arts are keeping pace.