Andrew Dubber     

Boat trip from Genoa to Camogli

As expected, I had a great time in Italy. I was busy pretty much the whole time, but I did make sure that I got to see a bit of the city, hang out with some great people and do some interesting things.

I was in Genoa with Stef working on the Aftershock Project – a collaboration between composer Nitin Sawhney and about a dozen musicians from across Europe who had never met. Over the course of the week, they wrote and rehearsed an hours worth of new music for a one-off performance in the little fishing village of Camogli.

Stef’s job was to build them a website, and he brought me in because I’m the ‘online music’ guy. Our idea was rather than simply build an online brochure, we would tell the story of the collaboration as it happened. Instead of making a website about Aftershock, we put Aftershock online.

We gave all of the musicians digital video cameras and asked them to film anything they thought was interesting. We took that footage, added a little bit of our own for context, and then uploaded it.

The site’s still being developed, because what we’ve done is a prototype, but if you visit the website, you can explore the narrative of Aftershock. Meet the different characters, see how they interact, get a sense of how music develops from idea to rehearsal to performance – as well as get behind the scenes and see the musicians’ perspective on the whole experience in the rehearsal room, on breaks and as they explore Genoa.

To me, that’s far more interesting than just a concert.

The stage at Camogli

We’re still putting it all together from over 500 individual pieces of video footage from 14 cameras, and figuring out how to connect it all and make it intuitive and navigable online – but it was an amazing experience, a really interesting thing to do – and a hell of a lot of work.

Italy itself was amazing. We met some great people, ate some fantastic food, stayed up till all hours drinking and talking, and explored the city.

The highlight was Camogli itself, where the concert took place. It was really gorgeous. Of course, the concert went brilliantly and everyone was awesome. For an hour by the sea, about 150 people were treated to music that nobody else had ever heard before, and which would never be performed live again.

The concert in Camogli

The drive home was a bit of a mission though. Far more so than the drive to Italy in the first place. When you’re not going on an adventure, but returning from one, 30 hours on the road seems to go by less quickly.

Stef had left his car in Camogli overnight, so we took a boat ride back there along the coast from Genoa, and left around 5pm. After crossing the alps in the most ferocious lightning storm I’d ever seen, we stopped for the night in a town in the south of France called Chambéry.

There was a music festival of some sort going on there, so we parked the car, wandered around the town, listened to some (mostly awful) music, grabbed a beer and then headed back to sleep in the car.

The boulangerie we’d strategically parked near didn’t actually open on Sunday morning, and the breakfast we picked up en route was both meagre and expensive. Not a great start to an incredibly long journey. I mean, we had some really good conversations and saw some interesting things along the way, but we were both pretty exhausted and the drive was just plain long.

So it’s nice to be back home after a long trip and an amazing but tiring week. Of course, I returned to a huge pile of marking… but it’s still lovely to be back.