It is great to be able to finally bring some more info about the Ableton live set work I did earlier in the year for Cosmicat’s recent run at the Saudi Pavilion, Expo 2025 in Osaka.
The brief was to build the instruments to be controlled by Cosmicat, using the custom gesture control system (built by Raven AV London).
Her concept for the pavilion show was a blend of traditional Saudi instrumentation with environmental sound from the Red Sea. I took these samples from Cosmicat, processed, mixed and spatialised them, and built an Ableton Live performance project around them.
The process also included creating a set of bespoke Max for Live devices that ingested data from the laser harp instruments and a “conductor” controller, via Stage Precision Grid, and translated that data into control of the musical elements.
Gestures felt like a natural way to morph between sample layers, changed filter cutoffs, launched one shot music stabs or SFX, changed spatial FX sends, and created textural transitions all whilst maintaining a strong musical feel to the performance.
The whole performance system / sound design was then fed into the venue’s d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system, with various parts of the instruments and bed spatialised around the audience area. Of course PrePosition version 2 was on control duty here!
Patreon members can check out the training video I made to show Cosmicat how to use the conductor station and laser harp – https://www.patreon.com/posts/144291094/edit
For more on the BrooksAudio ‘Spatial Artist Support’ service please check out this page –
https://brooksaudio.co.uk/spatial-artist-support/