The performer and producer on making music with Nintendo Wii remotes and why innovation is a byproduct of curiosity
Can you tell me a bit about Lucky Frame and how it came about?
Lucky Frame is a small creative studio I set up towards the end of studying for my masters in Edinburgh. I was doing a project involving Nintendo Wii remotes, where I made some software that used motion control to remix music quickly and easily. It got some attention online, so I scraped together some funding to start a small company.
My initial plan was to try and bring that software to Nintendo consoles, but I ended up moving more broadly into thinking about innovative approaches to music, games and interfaces. There are now three of us, and we spend much of our time making games. I'm really interested in games as a creative form, exploring the interfaces and experiences they can offer.
How do balance your performance and special projects?
I've been doing a lot over the past few years, often with Matthew Herbert but also on my own and with my brother as the Seznec Bros. It's something that comes quite naturally to me, but it can be difficult to do anything else while touring or doing a series; the act of performing is so physically tiring, let alone the travel that tends to go along with it.
Performing, however, is an amazing way to develop projects; it can be a lens through which you can refine any work. There's nothing like performing in front of a tiny, sceptical audience to force you to be on the ball. You have to learn about timing, narrative and context; you have to build a relationship with the audience as well as the material. I'm super interested in that triangular relationship – virtually all creative fields can be viewed within that context.
Where do your ideas come from?
I think ideas don't really "come from" anywhere; they are cobbled together based on experiences and influences. This most often happens subconsciously, so that little snippets of books I'm reading or strange things I've noticed will slip into whatever I'm working on at the moment.
Of course, many ideas are born from collaborating with others, so I generally hesitate to take full credit for any idea at all. It can certainly be difficult to separate my work from Lucky Frame's work – that's an ongoing challenge that I'm not sure I've fully worked out yet, but generally speaking, if a project has a lot to do with games it's a Lucky Frame thing.
What does innovation mean to you?
Wow, I'm not sure. I think innovation is a byproduct of curiosity. Maybe that's why sometimes it seems like children are the most innovative of all. When you are so curious about something that you want to explore it as thoroughly as possible, that often results in some form of innovation, whether or not you're aware of it at the time.
Your work has been funded by Creative Scotland, Nesta and the British Council – how do you bring others on board with your imagination?
Working with people and organisations means understanding what their concerns are, as well as their goals. I never want to design a project with funding in mind, but at the same time I want to empathise with organisations like these and work out how I can get them as excited about something as me. In some ways this is similar to performance, and I often credit my performance experience for making me pretty good at that.
You recently blogged about the joy of contact microphones – why does kit get you so excited?
One of the things that is getting me so excited about contact microphones is that I've been using them for years without any modification, which makes them sound kind of awful. I recently learned how to build a proper circuit for them, and the difference is astounding.
They can reveal sounds that you never would have thought of. I clamped them to a music box, for example, and instead of just hearing the melody, I was also hearing the vibration of the wood, and the motor turning around, and the metallic clank of the broken bits of the machinery.
You can use them as underwater microphones (which I plan to do soon) or freeze them in ice, or any number of other fun things. I love them because they provide a totally different way of listening – while our ears hear sounds travelling through the air, contact microphones pick up sound travelling through materials. They extend our listening ability; it's really quite magical.
What one thing would make your life better?
A real piano. I don't have any space in my flat or studio for a piano yet, so I have to make do with digital, which just means I don't play that much.
This interview is co-published with Arts Industry magazine
Yann Seznec is an artist, musician and founder of Lucky Frame – follow the studio on Twitter @lucky_frame and Yann @amazingrolo
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by Nancy Groves via Music: Electronic music | theguardian.com
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