Assail was originally composed for MAZE with a premiere in the BIMhuis as part of the 2017 MAZE Festival. It used the same technology as Utter including the Interactive Slides App, Max
The Interactive Slides App that was developed for my work Utter is no longer updated and the consequence was that certain data communication between the App on the iPads and my laptop was not possible anymore.
I decided to revise Assail where I could play it as a solo.
Marcel Wierckx and I dove into a long period of research to develop the programming where the piece would still hold it’s integrity and would be performable.
Marcel brilliantly solved the issue by programming in Javascript, using the p5js library which is controlled using the new node.script object in Max. The Javascript code runs in a browser using a limited set of features. It is platform-
We needed to make some compromises which seem now like enhancements after performing it for the first time at Constellation in Chicago on 28 April 2019.
The iPads display the texts from the original piece and the video is projected on a large screen behind me rather than on the iPads. This multi-visual setting offers a more complex staging and I think offers potential to further developments of Assail and ideas for future projects.
