About

Performance Fingerprints is an ongoing project in live drawing and improvised music. Musicians play acoustic instruments and move around the room, while a drawing instrument listens to them and watches them through a camera. Its drawing is projected as they play, and the musicians respond to it in turn.

The drawing follows changes in intensity, articulation, rhythm and texture, so the way each person plays shows up in the marks. It isn’t a music visualiser. The musicians are improvising with the drawing, and no two performances make the same one.

The project’s name comes from what each performance leaves behind: a drawing shaped by the timing, touch and hesitation of the players, and by the decisions they make together under time pressure.

How it started

Flautist Carla Rees encouraged the first experiments in drawing that responds to music, and her work helped turn them from a technical curiosity into an ongoing practice.

The project grew into a collaboration between Steve Meyfroidt and violinist and performer Ioana Petcu-Colan, who met while both were studying drawing with the Open College of the Arts. Their first sessions, with trombonist Ross Lyness at Digital Arts Studios in Belfast, were experiments. The musicians tried different ways of playing to see what the drawing would do, and the system’s limits began to shape how they played.

In June 2025, at Cork School of Music, the group grew to include Alex Petcu on percussion, Lina Andonovska on flute and Amy Prendergast as choreographer.

MarkSynth

MarkSynth is the drawing instrument at the centre of the project. Steve built it and has developed it through sessions with the musicians and Amy. In performance, control shifts between the performers, Steve at the controls, and the software, which has some behaviour of its own.

Performances

The live show, Fingerprints, premiered at The MAC, Belfast on 13 March 2026, with a matinee and an evening performance in the theatre. At the same time, artist Heidi Nguyen drew and painted live with pairs of musicians in The Crush.

On 21 June 2026 Fingerprints had its Irish premiere, with two performances at Triskel Arts Centre as part of Cork Midsummer Festival. Dancer Davide Marinelli joined the ensemble for these performances. See Fingerprints at Cork Midsummer Festival.

For rehearsal notes before the premiere, see Heading to The MAC, Belfast. Video from The MAC is on the Media page.