It'sSkippy!

About

About the work

It's Skippy! is a multimedia work for percussion, video, and live electronics. The work presents a sardonic imagining of the kangaroo's role within popular entertainment, isolating archival television footage in which the animal is dressed in costumes, handled by television presenters, or treated as a comic spectacle. These scenes are juxtaposed with close-up footage of a small wind-up kangaroo toy given to the composer by a close friend.

The percussion writing centres on an extended snare drum technique in which a single-handed roll continuously manipulates a variety of preparations. At times the percussion directly synchronizes with the video, punctuating its cartoon-like imagery or triggering visual events through precisely timed attacks. Elsewhere, the percussion generates textures that are transformed by the electronic processing.

Live pitch-shifting and processing give the percussion a degraded, lo-fi character that mirrors the often low-resolution archival video. While these electronics reinforce the kitsch humour of the imagery, they also introduce darker undertones through deep resonances, distorted reverberation, and unstable textures, revealing a more unsettling reading of the material.

The project was supported by the American Australian Association Arts Fund and the Government of Western Australia Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries.