BodyControlled #5 - Gestures
Opening Friday, 07.12.2012, 20.00
Performances by
Christian Kesten (DE)
Carlos Sandoval (MX) and Etoile Chaville (FR)
Eva Sjuve (SE)
Installations by
Christian Graupner (DE) & Alan Gleeson (IE)
PERFORMANCES
zunge lösen | releasing the tongue - Christian Kesten (DE)
zunge lösen by Christian Kesten consists of the following elements:
- (fine) slaps of the tongue on the bottom of the mouth
- (visible) tongue movements
- and tongue movements, which articulate a (chance) text, based on a given material of phones (syllables and smaller). Through breath and larynx they are made audible from time to time. Tongue movements, breath and voice function as independent layers which interact.
G is for Guam Flying Fox (Pteropus tokudae) - Christian Kesten (DE)
Über die Lebensweise des Guam-Flughunds ist nichts bekannt.
[Nothing is known about the Guam Flying Fox’s way of living.] for voice, hands/arms, feet.
The piece was originally composed for Antonia Baehr and her Abecedarium Bestiarium.
Lips revisited - Carlos Sandoval (MX) and Etoile Chaville (FR)
Lips revisited is a study on gesture’s contrast and interpretation. The first version of the piece (an approach on microgestures) was premiered at LEAP with Almut Kühne one year ago. This time the piece is much more fragmented both in terms of its elaboration and its discourse.
Carlos Sandoval: Live electronics and actions
Etoile Chaville: Voice and dance
Go Karamazov - Eva Sjuve (SE)
Go Karamazov is a wearable and wireless interface for sound and light. The live audio is programmed in Pure Data and is addressing issues of electromagnetic propagation. Light has been integrated into the design adding a visual element of light and shadows. Go Karamazov is an interface for live interactive performance, a wearable controller with sensors as inputs, reacting to movements of the performing body. The sonic output from the controller is composed in relation to the movements of the performer.
Eva Sjuve has been developing interfaces for gestural use since the late 1990s. GO interface is an early wireless interface, developed in 2006 for the performing arts, as a Nordscen Artist in Residency. GO Karamazov was later commissioned by New Composers Series in New York, and premiered at PERFORMA 07 biennale in New York City, as one of the highlights. Go Karamozov is an interface that adresses issues of electromagnetic propagation, via a very free adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s novel the Brothers Karamazov.
_________________________________________________
INSTALLATIONS
MindBox - Christian Graupner (DE)
With the audio-visual triptych MindBox Christian Graupner & partners created an audience reactive installation and an electro acoustic music instrument using the body of a ‘one armed bandit’ as an user interface. MindBox is a part of the work cycle H.RP [Humatic Re-Performing].
The installation attracts visitors’ senses offering a joyful gambling- game around musical, choreographical and cinematographical elements as dance & beat-boxing. The latter expression describes a form of vocal percussion from which the installation derives its title. MindBox is a triple-channel ‘media catapult’ to be touched. The arm and buttons of the modified fruit machine function as a tactile interface to the actions of a filmed character whose vocal- & movement clusters can be re-composed and re-performed by the audience.
MindBox is an artistic collaboration between:
Christian Graupner (GER) - Humatic, inventor, media artist, director, composer
Roberto Zappalà (IT) - performer, choreographer
Norbert Schnell (FR) - IRCAM Centre Pompidou, interactive music & sound design
Nils Peters (DE) - Humatic, system developer and software artist.
& others
FeeedBack 5 *public prototype & casting module - Christian Graupner (DE) & Alan Gleeson (IE)
FB5pp demonstrates the evolving audio features of the pipelined multi-screen media installation FeeedBack 5.
One by one, female visitors are invited to put on headphones and to wear a “prepared” electric guitar. In doing this they accept to play the main role in an intense re-performance, by becoming a experienced feedback guitar player and creating their own rich soundscape .
A smartphone and additional sensors are mounted on the guitar to transmit accurate 3D motion and position data to an external system which provides a reactive real-time soundtrack giving direct response to players activity and creating a close-to-real simulation. Surrounding visitors can observe the player becoming one with the instrument in swaying movements but are not able to listen to the spectacular soundtrack.
In addition to being a standalone sound installation FB5pp fires the imagination for the pipelined multi-channel / multi-user audiovisual work FeeedBack 5 (http://fb5.humatic.net). The setup serves for casting and test shootings that will develop to the complex piece which will be realized in early 2013.
Concept and Realisation: Christian Graupner (Humatic) & Alan Gleeson
Guitar Feedback Footage: Blacky Schwarz-Ruszczynski
Project Partner: Dr. Prof. Werner Jauk, Universität Graz
Android: Control Software: Nils Peters ( Humatic)
Additional Technical Support: Servando Barreiro & Jo Frgmt Gyrs
___________________________________________
BIOGRAPHIES
Christian Kesten (DE)
is a vocalist, performer, composer, sound and intermedia artist, and director. He studied music and interdisciplinary studies at UdK Berlin. He has developed a repertoire of extended vocal techniques, focusing on noise and subtle nuances of sound colours. His work explores the connections between voice and action, music and language, and music and visual arts, and also deals with the interpenetration of sound and space. Kesten has given solo performances as a composer-performer in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan, and has collaborated with Emmett Williams, Alison Knowles, Lucio Capece, Mark Trayle, and many others. His ensemble compositions have been presented at MUMOK Vienna, Ontological New York, MusiMars Montreal, Théâtre 2.21 Lausanne, Radialsystem V Berlin, Parochialkirche Berlin, and elsewhere. Kesten is a member of the ensemble Maulwerker and artistic director of the series ‘maulwerker performing music’. He has held teaching positions and given guest lectures in Europe, Israel, and the United States and serves as co-curator of the Labor Sonor series.
Carlos Sandoval (MX)
Carlos Sandoval is an in-between-categories artist-composer. He was born in Mexico City in the grueling, black-and-white, non catalyzed Fifties. He makes free improvisation and live electronics, music-theater pieces, music with trees and sensors, contemporary written music and an indiscriminate mixture of all the above. He lives and works in Germany since 2003. He has been tuning thousands of pianos to pay the bills so his music is NOT keyboard-oriented. He founded the Tilt Group and theInteraktion Festival in Berlin. He has been developing his Bluetooth gloves since 1997. His works have been premiered and performed in countless concerts, performances, festivals (as Donaueschingen and Huddersfield), musical encounters, courses,workshops, radio stations, bars, private homes, TV reports, closets, Via Crucis and even in concert halls mainly in France, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom and Mexico. He makes also video. Even if he is academy-allergenic he has fallen intothe temptation of teaching in various institutions, including the UNAM in Mexico and the University of the Arts Berlin (UdK).Studied theory, composition and analysis with Julio Estrada in Mexico and was Conlon Nancarrow’s assistant. Member of the Mexican Sistema Nacional de Creadores since 1999.
Eva Sjuve (SE)
Creative technologist, composer and researcher Eva Sjuve (SE), develops projects for wireless networks, audio and mobility. Her work has been included in media festivals and museums in Europe, Asia, Australia, USA and South America, including Performa 07 in NYC: ISEA 2009; the Australian Center of Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; Experiments in Art, Information and Technology, CalArts, USA; The Museum of Contemporary Arts, Chicago, USA. Her creative work appeared in several publications, including “Transmission Arts: Artists and Airwaves: Significant artists working with wireless technologies””, NYC 2011; “Everywhere and All at Once: An Anthology of Writings on Performa 07”, NYC 2010, ed. Goldberg, RoseLee.
She holds a Master’s degree, MPS, from Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University, a Master’s degrees in Art Theory, Lund University, Sweden, and electronic music composition at the Centre de Creation Musicale de Iannis Xenakis in Paris. Her research, has been published in CCIS, Vol. 7, Springer Verlag, Germany 2008, Creativity and Cognition, ACM 2009; ISEA 2008; New Interfaces for Musical Expression NIME 2008; Pure Data Convention, Linux Audio Conference.
Christian Graupner (DE)
In his latest work this Berlin-based artist is exploring the practices and myths around pop and contemporary music and combines multi channel video & sound with partly machine- partly user-controlled ‘humatic’ interfaces and mechanisms. His recent sculptural / media work includes gambling machines and Asian mojo figures, feedback guitars and beatbox-like vocal- & dance performances. In processing visual and audio material, he not only uses and adapts available computer programs but also uses the developments coded by his project collaborators. CG is composer, artist and the creator and developer of real-time media playback systems. His wide ranging earlier works were made up of drawings, paintings and experimental electronic music, mostly published on records, CDs as well as in movies and radio plays under the pseudonym VOOV (Violation of Ordinary Values). With his works such as ‘2Lives Left’ and newest projects ‘MindBox’ and ‘Don’t Dance’, he is keeping alive his conceptual platform ‘Automatic Clubbing’. In 2000 he formed the independent artist group and production company Humatic Ltd. together with Nils Peters who develops software tools for artists working in a variety of media forms. CG has been guest at ZKM Karlsruhe. His work has been shown and performed worldwide.
Alan Gleeson (IE)
His current work explores, through research and performance, the inner properties of sound in an attempt to derive new meaning, expression, and understanding from sounds with existing associations. With influences ranging from Musique Concrète, acoustic ecology, psychoacoustics and field recording he questions the sound environment we currently inhabit and reflects on the sonic worlds found in nature and industry. Recent work has included performing in a re-interpretation of David Tudor’s work ‘ Rainforest’, entitled Regenwald 2011 at the Club Transmediale festival in Berlin, and a showing of an installation piece ‘Topological Space’ in collaboration with visual artist Katrina Sheena Smyth at the PS2 Gallery in Belfast. Alan obtained a Masters Degree (1st class) in Music Technology (2010) from the Digital Media and Arts Research Centre at the University of Limerick, Ireland.