Usina Mekanica (UM), is a conceptual new music/new media happening involving live musicians, kinetic objects and video generated in real time. UM is performed by Fuse Ensemble in collaboration with Workingman Collective. UM uses live-action wind-up toys -- their sound and images manipulated and reintegrated into the performance space via real-time video and audio to propose a psychological landscape for the audience. UM is a multilayer performance that uses as source material the possible relations of man and machine while playing on childhood memories to trigger notions of nursery rhymes and the emotions provoked by the industrialized clanking of the metal wind up machines. ¬¬ The soundscape created by live musicians and electronics evokes not a single memory but a mental landscape -- a context of the meanings held within childhood memories, real or invented. The musicians of Fuse interact with the toys and the tactile sounds they create while the Toymaster directs. These wind-up machines move about on an elaborate kinetic table created by the Workingman Collective. The table serves as a known communal space that bridges the two layers of invented psychological landscape and the mechanical devices themselves and follows the mechanical theme by being able to move on its own – even becoming an instrument itself at one point. Fuse Ensemble is a concept-based artistic endeavor between composer Gina Biver and new media artist Edgar Endress. This season Fuse is collaborating with artists Peter Winant and Tom Ashcraft of Workingman Collective to produce Usina Mekanica. Fuse Ensemble is based in Washington DC. VIsit www.fuse-ensemble.com for more information. The Fuse Ensemble performing “Usina Mekanica”: A local ensemble led by composer Gina Biver, Fuse Ensemble present challenging works by living composers using traditional instruments such as the flute and clarinet, and unusual ones like wind-up toys and toy-pianos. Fuse Ensemble has a running collaboration with Edgar Endress, a video artist, who was present at the performance on Sunday even though it did not incorporate his visuals. As I mentioned earlier, it usually takes my brain a little bit to adjust to experimental music performance and Sunday was no different. Thankfully, Fuse Ensemble’s performance was designed perfectly to ease the listener into their far-out sound. The performance began with two toy pianos, facing one another atop a large green table. In between the pianos were several metal wind-up toys, seemingly for decoration. Biver and friend took their positions at their respective toy pianos and began to play. Biver rapped her knuckle on the wood under-belly of her piano while occasionally tinkling its keys with her other hand. Her piano sounded broken and her knuckle- wraps on its base added an eerie effect. Across from Biver, the other pianist played a piece of repeating variations from sheet music. Her playing was much more frantic and created a tension with Biver’s wrapping and sick piano. The piece was eerie but low-key and by its end I was totally on-board for the rest of their performance. Fuse Ensemble at full-strength is a large group. Nine people on stage with instruments ranging from piano, cello, electric violin, the aforementioned wood-winds, and drums. Perhaps the two most unique musicians in the group were the two men in gray jumpsuits who stood by the green table and played wind-up toys. Various metal toy vehicles zoomed across the table-top, their wound-up engines buzzing into the microphones. Two wind-up metal monkeys played xylophones. A dozen metal mice wiggled their tails and zipped around in circles, colliding. Every sound the toys made was picked up by the microphone and covered the ensemble’s performance in a hail of clicks, clacks, whirs, and dings. The ensemble met this tinny randomness with discordant chamber-pop. The combined effect was at times hectic and unsettling, and at others completely pleasant and even whimsical. For their finale, most of Fuse Ensemble left the stage leaving behind an empty green table manned by one of the toy-players, a violinist, and Bivers. What followed is one of the oddest performances I will ever see. The violinist began playing a creepy, almost horror film score styled piece. The toy-player stood by the table holding a microphone and occasionally touching the table top; almost rubbing it. As the violin wailed away, our attention was on the man standing by the table. What was he going to do? Was he going to sing? Was he going to start pounding on the table? No, nothing so mundane. It began subtly, the table shifted slightly. Then with more speed. The table top began to wobble, or warp. It looked like the table top was a wave. Meanwhile the violin wailed on. It took a second for the brain to reconcile the fact that this table had come to life. It had come to life and it was making music. Soon the table (no small table mid you; think dining room table) was walking around the room, making mechanical noises which were picked up by microphone and somehow making sense along with the violin. Each step the table took was accompanied by a mechanical sound, a whoosh, and a thud. The table was a alive and a few times even walked dangerously close to the front row, menacing the audience with its strangeness. The piece went on like that for several minutes and not once did the living table lose its novelty. It was a reality-bending performance. http://www.welovedc.com/2010/09/21/we-love-music-music-marathon-overload-2010-sonic-circuits-festival/