Performance Fingerprints — heading to The MAC, Belfast

Over the last months I’ve been deep in the practical work of turning Performance Fingerprints into something we can perform in public: a live drawing piece made in collaboration with improvising musicians.

On 13 March 2026 we’ll premiere the work at The MAC, Belfast.

At the centre of the project is a drawing instrument I’ve built (MarkSynth), designed to listen and watch rather than simply react. It takes the physical realities of performance—breath, bow pressure, attack, sustained tone, and movement through space (captured by a camera)—and translates them into a visual field that accumulates, clears, and re-forms as the music unfolds.

What matters to me is that this is an acoustic, embodied collaboration, not a pre-programmed electronic show. The band responds to the room, to each other, and to the changing energy of the set. I’m trying to make the visuals behave with the same kind of immediacy: something we can play together.

In rehearsal I’ve been focusing on two ideas that make the system workable live:

• Agency — a sliding scale that passes control between the performers (through audio and camera input) and me (through the instrument’s settings). It lets the visuals lead sometimes, and follow at other times.
• Intent — a higher-level way to steer the “feel” of the drawing (still / sparse / flowing / turbulent) without needing to micromanage details.

The run-up to this premiere has been about tightening that relationship: reducing fragility, building reliable visual “registers”, and treating the drawing system as an instrument in its own right—one that can sit alongside violin, flute, percussion, and trombone as part of a shared improvisation.

For the premiere at The MAC the immediate focus is the live experience in the room. But the system is also built to leave open a route back into physical making: the aim is for fingerprints of an ephemeral performance to become physical artefacts—residue of the time-based work that can be printed, painted into, or otherwise made material.

A selection of twelve rehearsal stills:

If you’d like the earlier background, you can read the first project update: Performance Fingerprints.