Bleep

An exploration of the current human experience as informed/moulded by data that is all encompassing and dividing: utilised and exploited as a political tool, further informed by a recent text Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul Han - Ryan Lee West' s latest work as Rival Consoles forms a suite of powerful and exploratory original music composed for Overflow, the contemporary dance production choreographed by Alexander Whitley which premiered in May 2021 at the Sadler’s Wells in London.

West expands: “The piece opens with Monster which has a kind of drunken madness to it, highly repetitive to mirror the repetitive nature of how we as humans engage with technology such as social media. It’s sometimes edging towards chaos but yet always returning back to the same starting point, but eventually giving way to exhaustion. I wanted to create a bold opening piece for Overflow,” states West.

Echoing the interrogation of data mining as a concept, West also uses techniques to map the monologue data of dancer Tia Hockey, extracting from it chords for the track I Like. Also featured is a standalone work Pulses of Information, which was previously released yet the hyper kinetic nature of which chimes in perfectly with the whole of the Rival Consoles soundscape.