As many Eastern students probably know the computer-acoustic band Big Robot visited campus last night to give a free performance in the Doudna Fine Arts Center.

I love attending live music of nearly any kind so I often jump on a chance to cover it for the paper as it combines the work that I love with an often enjoyable experience.

From a photography standpoint, the concert was both fun and challenging. The Theatre in Doudna is dark. Flash isn’t allowed (and good photojournalists shouldn’t really be using it anyway) but if your camera can handle it the colorful spotlighting can make things appear extreme and dramatic.

For those of you who were wondering I shot with an EOS Rebel T3i and a 70-200mm lense for plenty of zoom. I kept a 2.8 f/stop, 1/250 shutter speed and a 6400 iso. The high iso makes things a little noisy but I needed the extra light sensitivity to shoot at a speed where most things are in focus.

This made for some cool looking shots, but I still had to be patient. Big Robot consists of musicians who are mostly working with computers. This meant that a lot of shots of them just look like they are working at a computer with funky lighting. Eventually though they changed around instruments, helping me get shots that were a bit more exciting.

See without the caption on the second photo, it would be difficult to tell this guy is making live music.

Photo 3 is more like it. I really enjoyed Drews’ guitar playing and I wish he had used it more throughout the concert.

I had the easiest time getting photos of Deal, the subject of photos 4,5 and 6. He was moving around for most of the concert and used the most traditional instruments.

Deal used an interesting technique of running a violin bow over a cymbal. It kind of reminded me of the movie “300″ where the Spartans wielded their spears and shields in coordinated combinations. I’ve never seen anything like this before and made a unique sound.

Unfortunately this type of lighting often makes me think I’ve gotten plenty of good photos only to realize during editing that many of them are blurry or out of focus. 

I have no idea what Munson is playing in the first photo. But if anyone knows I would be more than interested in listening.

Big Robot did not disappoint. Their music seemed experimental which I found a jarring at first. It wasn’t what I was expected and it was much different than the typical indie rock I jam out to on a regular basis (Modest Mouse anyone?).

With zero lyrics and rarely a consistent rhythm Big Robot probably isn’t going on the playlist of mainstream music listeners. But they are trying different art which I respect.

Their sound was closer to that of movie scores. They combined their music with multimedia video displays that were projected behind them. These were largely abstract but did include a short film called “Noir.”

All three of the band members are also music professors at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis which is lucky for the students there since professors that keep working in their chosen field seemed to be more skilled.

If you’d like to read more about them check out their website at http://www.bigrobot.org/main/

My friend Robyn also wrote about them here.