by Mike Hansen (Canada)

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The new millennium has become the breeding ground of DJ culture. Turntables are back with a vengeance. What was once seen as obsolete is now the biggest selling "instrument" in music stores. The "DJ in a box" phenomenon has changed the way music is being approached. A post modern Eulogy to original thinking, scratching, beat mixing, dance floor hysteria has replaced the way music functions. If you are between the ages of 10 and 45, DJ culture has played a significant role in your musical upbringing.

Itch questions DJ Culture - its high tech equipment, its use of records as tools for dance and profit. Itch dispels the mystique behind the now all powerful DJ. Itch invites the audience to control the environment, not through requests and dance floor participation, but by asking you to actually spin the discs.

Itch is played out on 12 self-contained record players. The record players are institutional style machines that have their own built in amplifiers and speakers. They sit in the audience beside its members/performers. The rules of the game are printed on the top of each record player or described by the m/c or host.

Itch is a game with few rules and limitless possibilities. The audience/performers are guided by the conductor/composer (artist Mike Hansen). Dressed in attire befitting a conductor, with white tux and tails, white gloves and music stand, he holds a baton. For children of my generation he evokes images of the uber-conductor "Leopold" from the famed bugs bunny cartoon. The participants are presented with this inflated image of authority (the artist) and therefore stand in a relationship of trust to their conductor, in the absence of formal training on their "instruments".

The conducting is based on colour. The conductor works with a deck of cards, showing one or more at a time to control the sounds. The records are colour coded, with any information about the content having been disguised. One player could have rock and roll, another spoken word. The randomness of the card drawing, through shuffling, never allows for composition to be repeated.

Those audience members designated performers by their proximity to the machines respond by playing, scratching, and any way manipulating the record on the player beside them. So, if a red card is displayed, all audience/performers with red labeled records start to manipulate their records. A yellow card is also pulled, asking yellow records to join in. Red is put down, and blue is lifted. Red players stop - blues add to the mix. This continues until the conductor/composer is satisfied the composition is complete. The conductor’s responsibility is to mold this simultaneous synthesis of sound and organization into one ensemble.

Itch will always create new and unheard sound. It is a modern approach to music making where chance controls the content. As in all improvisation, Itch doesn’t seek to convey a context to the audience, but rather to reveal the audience-as-player to itself - the exploration of the record player, its sounds, form, and placement within the hall, all function as the environment created by the piece.

Itch demands a high degree of involvement and interaction from both participating and non-participating audience members. The players are forced into an initially uncomfortable role they couldn’t foresee and for which they are un prepared. The orchestra is inside the audience, rather than facing them. As the lines between audience and performer are blurred, everyone meets the demands of the moment with alert awareness.

Itch meets the need (or desire) to interact and/or to create a spontaneous improvisational dialogue with the music, audience/musicians and environment. The audience/performers become the DJs, demystifying their role. Itch opens the door to allow non-professionals to see, feel and fully experience the mechanics of improvisation and noisemaking in a musical context.

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