Microsoft Network (MSN) "Rifff" Andy Partridge Special
On June 6, 1997 the Microsoft Network (MSN) On-line
service ran a week long Andy Partridge special as part of their Rifff project. The project included graphics said to have
been chosen/designed by Andy, previously unheard music - with
interactive "mixing" - interview clips and text. The
show was repeated, with a further live chat event, during the
first week of September, 1997. Clearance from the Rifff team to
include this material has been sought and generously given.
Here's what Andy had to say about it:
"I recently did a live interview on the internet for Microsoft because I did some music for them. They contacted me and said they had an interactive music site called Rifff, and would I do a piece of music and some visuals for the site. What happens is you log on to this site, download the stuff into your computer and get all the images and music and when you click on to these images they change or new scenes occur and the music changes to mirror that. What I did was program - you can't really play live because it all has to be reproduced by everyone's home computer - so I programmed a song called "Born Out Of Your Mouth", and I programmed all the music along with a lot of sound effects and I took a lot of old toy catalogues and got them to scan in pictures which sort of come to life and march around. I did a sound interview which tbey put on this Rifff web site and I also did a live on-line interview for about an hour and a half. There was a lot of people up for that and we couldn't get them all answered.
I'm not on the internet, so I can't even see my own handwork. I went up to London to Microsoft and they came down to me. We storyboarded everything and I did the composing and programming and they took discs away with them. I saw a rough version of it which looked pretty good, and some other (sites) by other people. I wasn't that impressed; I think I've done one of the best of these interactive sites yet."
extracted from The Little Express
Interview transcribed from Real Audio clips
Transcript of the 12 June on-line "chat" with Andy
Transcript of the 4 September on-line "chat" with Andy
