LIVE, video, audio: three objects, three crafts

LIVE is a span of time. It has a room, even an invisible one, a duration, accidents. A lot is forgiven if the presence is true. Boredom is not.

The video — clip or short — is a frame. It chooses a gesture, a chorus, a face. It can serve a song. It can also reduce it to a tic. Many tracks die from being thought only as an excerpt.

Audio is a harder object. It no longer has your eyes. Your jokes. The gift falling in. It has only the time of the song. That is why an excellent LIVE can make a bad single, and why a just single can grow a LIVE.

We do not ask an artist to be weak on stage in order to be “more record”. We ask them to know which object they are in. Mixing the three without saying so often produces confusion.

A project holds when these three objects speak to each other without copying each other. LIVE feeds. Video shows. Audio remains. If only one does all the work, the project leans — then it breaks.