Peter Sellers: "In Tandem with the related sense of smell, hearing is that sense that is most deeply associated with memory. Sound evokes place, not space. That is to say, sound is where we locate ourselves, not physically, but mentally and spiritually. Sound exists inside our heads. It is our greatest experience of intimacy, it transports us, it invades us" (Sound, A reader in theatre practice. pp47)
John Berger: "The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe" can we not equally replace 'see' with 'hear'? (idem pp 197)
La Belle "[W]e see, or hear, how my voice is also immediately beyond myself, around the room, and , importantly, inside the head of others. In this way, sound is always already a public event, in that it moves from a single source and immediately arrives at multiple destination. It eminates and in doing so fills space and others ears. To speak then is to live in more than one head, beyond an individual mind. Listening is thus a form of participation in the sharing of a sound event, however banal." (Background Noise, Brandon LaBelle, ppxi)
Malcolm Le Grice: mass media 'has progressively created a cultural schism between the representation and the cultural object. Instantaneous transmission of images and sounds across space have created a cultural habit reading the electronic representation as if it were present. Our discourse with the real has become a discourse with the represented image, a presence of the image not in conflict with its lack of physical proximity." (in Dixon Digital Performance pp127)
Dixon: "Liveness, in phenomenological terms, has more to do with time and "now-ness" than with corporiality or virtuality of subjects being observed" (id. pp 127)
"Put simply, for the spectator, liveness is just "being there", whatever performance form (live, recorded, telematic ...) is being watched. (id. pp129)
"Robert Edmond Jones ... suggested that theatre audiences are more "awake" because they view the performance with an acute awareness not only of the performers but also of each other, whereas cinema audiences view films in a more isolated, solitary, and somnambulant mode. (id. pp129)
"Watching film, video, and digital media is a more voyeuristic experience than watching live performance, since in the literal sense of the word, the onlooker is looking from a position without fear of being seen by the watched. (id. pp130)
>>> CV- or in fear of being caught out by the other audients looking on, experiencing empathy for a theatriocal situation, and visiting places in ones own mind (experiencing them) that the individual would never enter into in real life.
Dixon: "Another core problem is that reduced to its essence, presence is about interest and command of attention, not space or liveness. [...] In this sense, presence in relation to audience engagement and attention is dependent on the compulsion of the audiovisual activity, not on liveness or corporeal three-dimensionality." (id. pp 132)
"In his study of minimalist art, Michael Fried defines presence as "the special complicity that the work extorts from the beholder. Something is said to have presence when it demands that the beholder takes it into account, that he take it seriously - and when the fulfillment of that demand consists simply in being aware of it and, so to speak, in acting accordingly." [...] It is content not container than [sic] asserts presence. (id. pp134)
>>> CV- the musicians/ performers presence on stage will be measured and judged throughout ASJ ... they need to be aware of that, even of their meta-character is themselves, they must always be 'present' in the "philosophy of pleasure".
Friday 30 April 2010
Thursday 29 April 2010
Interesting extracts from Nicholas Cook's 'Analysing Musical Multimedia'
[Eisenstein] complained that people like Kandinski 'propose an aimless, vague, "absolutely free" inner tonaility (der innere Klang), neither as a direction nor as a means, but as an end in itself, as the summit of achievement." (pp50)
"Eisenstein's concept of montage ... that different media relate to one another through shared qualities, and in particular through shared emotional qualities; to this extent Eisenstein's theory of cross media relationships is very like Kandinski's. But for Eisenstein these abstract relationships articulate the essentially distinct contents of individual media." (eg a crowd of people on screen and emotional music may be linked through rhythm, perception but each retains its own specificity. (pp50)
"Eisenstein: 'Modern esthetics [sic] is built upon the disunion of elements,' he says, quaoting from Réne Guilleré; accordingly, 'Matching of picture and sound ... may be built upon a combination of unlike elements, without attempting to conceal the resulting dissonance between the aurals and the visuals'. ... [T]his is not to suggest that the two media should simply go their own way ([as in Cage/ Cunningham]) however; the media may correspond with one another or they may not, Eisenstein says, but 'in either circumstance the relationship music be compositionally controlled'." (pp54) >>> CV - there is a third way, inbetween Cage/ Cunningham's free relationship and the compositionally controlled and that is free journeys of the material within constrained horizons encircling fixed material.
"Picture and music are related not directly, but by virtue of something that they embody" (pp 57)
"Brecht: 'So long as the expression 'Gesamtkunstwerk' (or integrated work of art') means that the integration os a muddle, so long as the arts are supposed to be 'fused' together, the various elements will all be equally degraded, and each will act as a mere 'feed' for the rest. The process of fusion extends to the spectator, who gets thrown into the melting pot too and becomes a passive (suffering) part of the total work of art. Witchcraft of this sort must of course be fought against. Whatever is intended to produce hypnosis, is likely to induce sordid intoxication, or creates fog, must be given up." (pp126)
>>> CV - Amen. This witchcraft - of layered phenomonolgies - coinciding and colliding and confusing the audient is the type of artform I understand opera to be ... and not what I am attempting to create. However, this fusion of visual and aural works well in cinema; but the exception is that the audient becomes a spectator to the visual image immersed in sound (with the eye and ear working well to convince the legitimacy of the other - see Murch in Chion, Chion and Altman) but in live theatre the audience and the performer (sound, dancer, actor) are both participants; the experience of which is another phenomenological element added to the quiche.
"Kershaw condemning the 'fawning dependency of visual image of sound' [King visual and Queen sound] 'that results from too tight a co-ordination of the two; any such 'simplistic one-to-one relationship'. he says, results in 'the one becoming a mere embellishment, a condiment to the other' (pp126)
>>> CV - The message within each medium should be allowed to be unadulterated - phenomenologically speaking the whole experience elicited in an audient from smelling the scent of a flower does not need the image of that flower to enhance the experience. Going back to Don Idhe: each living experience is registered and stored as a totality of all sense modalities, and the phenomenological response to each sense conjures up a whole memory ... the question here then is what image, or sound, or other sensorial 'message'/ 'metaphor' would be appropriate to accompany and enhance the audient experience of smelling the scent of a flower?
"Kershaw: "It is vital that each medium be permitted to develop according to its own "inner necessity" (pp127)
"Eisenstein's concept of montage ... that different media relate to one another through shared qualities, and in particular through shared emotional qualities; to this extent Eisenstein's theory of cross media relationships is very like Kandinski's. But for Eisenstein these abstract relationships articulate the essentially distinct contents of individual media." (eg a crowd of people on screen and emotional music may be linked through rhythm, perception but each retains its own specificity. (pp50)
"Eisenstein: 'Modern esthetics [sic] is built upon the disunion of elements,' he says, quaoting from Réne Guilleré; accordingly, 'Matching of picture and sound ... may be built upon a combination of unlike elements, without attempting to conceal the resulting dissonance between the aurals and the visuals'. ... [T]his is not to suggest that the two media should simply go their own way ([as in Cage/ Cunningham]) however; the media may correspond with one another or they may not, Eisenstein says, but 'in either circumstance the relationship music be compositionally controlled'." (pp54) >>> CV - there is a third way, inbetween Cage/ Cunningham's free relationship and the compositionally controlled and that is free journeys of the material within constrained horizons encircling fixed material.
"Picture and music are related not directly, but by virtue of something that they embody" (pp 57)
"Brecht: 'So long as the expression 'Gesamtkunstwerk' (or integrated work of art') means that the integration os a muddle, so long as the arts are supposed to be 'fused' together, the various elements will all be equally degraded, and each will act as a mere 'feed' for the rest. The process of fusion extends to the spectator, who gets thrown into the melting pot too and becomes a passive (suffering) part of the total work of art. Witchcraft of this sort must of course be fought against. Whatever is intended to produce hypnosis, is likely to induce sordid intoxication, or creates fog, must be given up." (pp126)
>>> CV - Amen. This witchcraft - of layered phenomonolgies - coinciding and colliding and confusing the audient is the type of artform I understand opera to be ... and not what I am attempting to create. However, this fusion of visual and aural works well in cinema; but the exception is that the audient becomes a spectator to the visual image immersed in sound (with the eye and ear working well to convince the legitimacy of the other - see Murch in Chion, Chion and Altman) but in live theatre the audience and the performer (sound, dancer, actor) are both participants; the experience of which is another phenomenological element added to the quiche.
"Kershaw condemning the 'fawning dependency of visual image of sound' [King visual and Queen sound] 'that results from too tight a co-ordination of the two; any such 'simplistic one-to-one relationship'. he says, results in 'the one becoming a mere embellishment, a condiment to the other' (pp126)
>>> CV - The message within each medium should be allowed to be unadulterated - phenomenologically speaking the whole experience elicited in an audient from smelling the scent of a flower does not need the image of that flower to enhance the experience. Going back to Don Idhe: each living experience is registered and stored as a totality of all sense modalities, and the phenomenological response to each sense conjures up a whole memory ... the question here then is what image, or sound, or other sensorial 'message'/ 'metaphor' would be appropriate to accompany and enhance the audient experience of smelling the scent of a flower?
"Kershaw: "It is vital that each medium be permitted to develop according to its own "inner necessity" (pp127)
List of Authoritative French Folk Music
http://www.jstor.org/pss/924251
2 very interesting albums from this list:
- French Folk Music (Columbia World Library ed Alan Lomax) LINK
Clearance will be a project for Alistair Norbury (my old manager and publisher from Cousteau days)
In anticipation of a sentimental journey (ev2)
In summer of 2010 ev2 will embark on a sentimental journey through France and Italy. The idea is to follow the route taken by Yorick and to create a library of field recordings from sounds and places mentioned in the book. We may take on the role of Yorick and Le Fleur and we will take with us a sopranino sax, a bohdran, lots of recording equipment, fluffy and pandora
There are 5 other purposes to this trip:
1) capture street music (live) or broadcast music (radios)
2) investigate micro and macro phonography at each place
3) create a series of cameos in response to each place using sopranino sax and drum (similar to Trono LINK)
4) Illicit song and laughter for children and adults using a similar process to 'Say Something' (LINK)
5) generally seek and provoke a philosophy of pleasure - embodying the central premise of this piece - and record that through sound, music and experience
There are 5 other purposes to this trip:
1) capture street music (live) or broadcast music (radios)
2) investigate micro and macro phonography at each place
3) create a series of cameos in response to each place using sopranino sax and drum (similar to Trono LINK)
4) Illicit song and laughter for children and adults using a similar process to 'Say Something' (LINK)
5) generally seek and provoke a philosophy of pleasure - embodying the central premise of this piece - and record that through sound, music and experience
Past - Present - Future
One element to consider is the implications of temporal linearity within the source material, i.e. Sterne's book was written in 1768, and uses the language of that time; Martini's music was composed in the late 1700's, and published in the 1920's; the historical folk music were recorded around the 1950's; the field recordings resulting from ev2's sentimental journey will be recorded in 2010, and the premiere will be 2011.
How will all this work? Especially given the mix of disembodied voices from different ages.
How will all this work? Especially given the mix of disembodied voices from different ages.
Compositional elements
1. materials
At the moment ASJ will be scored for each of the following soloists:
- sax (sop maybe tnr): Jonathan Eato
- 'cello: Audrey Riley (TBC)
- accordion: Janie Amour (TBC)
- Kyma: Craig Vear
- Voice: Craig Parkinson (TBC)
Each musician will also be required to use their voice, using either speech, song, chant, loops, or sprechstimme, or a mixture or combination of these.
The elements for the soundscape will be:
- field recordings from places mentioned in the book (but in 2010 - see post on past-present-future)
- sounds mentioned in the book
- recitation of the book - possibly by an older man such as Donald Sinden, who would be revisiting the book after 30 years, reflecting the real life Sterne revisiting youth in ASJ) - not convinced of this element .. TBD
- ev2 cameos recorded at the places mentioned in the book
- recordings of people laughing, singing, enjoying life at places mentioned in the book
- field recordings of macro and micro - delicate phonography
- historical recordings of folk music from geographic areas mentioned in the book
- silence
The visual score will be:
- black page
- the book
- illustrations from various publication of the book
- manuscripts of Giovanni Battista Martini (1706-86)
- found manuscripts from Shandy Hall
2. musician embodyment
It is proposed that each performer will be required to embody a sense of the piece through their music - similarly the book is embedded in the music score. It is this notion - "a philosophy of the emotions of the heart, and of pleasure, fun and wholehearted joy". The performers will therefore be required to "pirouette about the world, peeping and peering, enjoying a flirtation here, bestowing a few coppers there, and sitting in whatever little patch of sunshine one can find."
To this end they have been chosen for what musical credentials each of them bring with them in addition to being assigned meta-characters to focus their embodiment. E.g.
- 'cello: can at times take on a role of Eliza - a character within the book - or she can take on the role of a viol da gamba improvising accompanist from the 18th century, in the style of, say, Susanne Heinrich re-working the music of Abel/ Sterne.
- saxophone: can at times take on the role of Le fleur, or can take on the role pipes-man in village band
- accordion: can take on the role of Maria any of the 'other' female fancies, or can be a chanteuse - as such the performer will need to feel comfortable singing and accompanying herself
- voice - this is perhaps the most important part, in so much as the "narrator" audio will not be utilized in this piece. The actor/musician that performs will need to embody the character of Yorick through voice and persona, and to feel happy, as Yorick, bursting into song, or extemporizing with the text, or the unfolding music. I also suggest that it is a young man, with a comedy background.
- Kyma: this will provide the macro structuring with the quality of each 'act' dictated by the live processing. In this sense Kyma's character is that of Strene. The audio for processing will be only the live elements of voice and instruments, and will be the "glue" inbetween the soloists (above)
3. instructions
The musicians will be given a similar instruction to that with CJA:
I describe this piece as a ‘play’ for musicians, in so much as each musician has a responsibility to a narrative exposition – however abstract this may be – and approaches the performance embracing any of the definitions for the word play (noun or verb). The role of the musician is to contribute to a sense of place – in this case the reality within the book. Although it is not imperative that the musicians read the original text, it is however important that they read the abstract and programme notes. Of paramount importance is that each musician enters into the spirit of the piece.
Each musician auralises a response through improvisation using their voice or their instrument.
At any given moment for any given duration this improvisation can be positioned between literal and abstract associations to the visual and/ or aural stimulus. This response can move freely across this range, it can identify with individual elements within the collective sound or fragments of visual information; it can be proactive or reactive; it can be dependent or independent. Alternatively the musician can choose to do nothing.
Exceptions:
- No “free” association improvisation; however, this does not exclude extended or avant-garde instrumental techniques
- The recital of the text can involve speech, song, chant, or Sprechstimme, or a mixture or combination of these. This can include vocal sounds, emotional utterance or language
- The texts can be read in their original syntax and context, or as abstract poetry, graphical score, libretto, material for loop, or as a mixture or combination of these.
4. Staging
If this work is to be a digital opera and presented on a stage then the visual elements will need to be considered with, or as part, of the compositional process. In my mind there is no point in having a completed musical score and then slapping on another phenomenological experience for the audience to consider.
Whilst I don't intend to exclude the director as authority on such visual matters, and not wanting to appear beyond my talent, it is imperative that the visual is scored.
I suggest using two elements from the CJA research: 1) peripheral lighting to effect mood, or construct confusion, 2) abstract movement in the visuals to evoke a sense of travel.
ASJ piece should also be set in the round, with the musicians/ operators in the centre - each embodying the central premise of the book, that of the philosophy of pleasure. This could manifest itself in engaging, as a member of the might, in a illuminating duet between two other musicians - a piece of spontaneous magic - or being wholly present in their own unfolding creative act.
Initial thoughts have the audience surrounding the musicians looking at them/ across them through the audience on the opposite side and onto a projection gauze whiich will envelop the whole in 360˚ tapestry. There are some significant problems of air current suck. An alternative solution might be to have this 360˚ gauze above the heads. This will give a peripheral experience; and an option for the oculars in the audience to "watch something".
4. surround diffusion
ASJ will be in quad. The instruments/ voices will be diffused centrally. But the evolving soundscape will have a diffusion algorithm to decide which of 4 quadrants to be projected.
At the moment ASJ will be scored for each of the following soloists:
- sax (sop maybe tnr): Jonathan Eato
- 'cello: Audrey Riley (TBC)
- accordion: Janie Amour (TBC)
- Kyma: Craig Vear
- Voice: Craig Parkinson (TBC)
Each musician will also be required to use their voice, using either speech, song, chant, loops, or sprechstimme, or a mixture or combination of these.
The elements for the soundscape will be:
- field recordings from places mentioned in the book (but in 2010 - see post on past-present-future)
- sounds mentioned in the book
- recitation of the book - possibly by an older man such as Donald Sinden, who would be revisiting the book after 30 years, reflecting the real life Sterne revisiting youth in ASJ) - not convinced of this element .. TBD
- ev2 cameos recorded at the places mentioned in the book
- recordings of people laughing, singing, enjoying life at places mentioned in the book
- field recordings of macro and micro - delicate phonography
- historical recordings of folk music from geographic areas mentioned in the book
- silence
The visual score will be:
- black page
- the book
- illustrations from various publication of the book
- manuscripts of Giovanni Battista Martini (1706-86)
- found manuscripts from Shandy Hall
2. musician embodyment
It is proposed that each performer will be required to embody a sense of the piece through their music - similarly the book is embedded in the music score. It is this notion - "a philosophy of the emotions of the heart, and of pleasure, fun and wholehearted joy". The performers will therefore be required to "pirouette about the world, peeping and peering, enjoying a flirtation here, bestowing a few coppers there, and sitting in whatever little patch of sunshine one can find."
To this end they have been chosen for what musical credentials each of them bring with them in addition to being assigned meta-characters to focus their embodiment. E.g.
- 'cello: can at times take on a role of Eliza - a character within the book - or she can take on the role of a viol da gamba improvising accompanist from the 18th century, in the style of, say, Susanne Heinrich re-working the music of Abel/ Sterne.
- saxophone: can at times take on the role of Le fleur, or can take on the role pipes-man in village band
- accordion: can take on the role of Maria any of the 'other' female fancies, or can be a chanteuse - as such the performer will need to feel comfortable singing and accompanying herself
- voice - this is perhaps the most important part, in so much as the "narrator" audio will not be utilized in this piece. The actor/musician that performs will need to embody the character of Yorick through voice and persona, and to feel happy, as Yorick, bursting into song, or extemporizing with the text, or the unfolding music. I also suggest that it is a young man, with a comedy background.
- Kyma: this will provide the macro structuring with the quality of each 'act' dictated by the live processing. In this sense Kyma's character is that of Strene. The audio for processing will be only the live elements of voice and instruments, and will be the "glue" inbetween the soloists (above)
3. instructions
The musicians will be given a similar instruction to that with CJA:
I describe this piece as a ‘play’ for musicians, in so much as each musician has a responsibility to a narrative exposition – however abstract this may be – and approaches the performance embracing any of the definitions for the word play (noun or verb). The role of the musician is to contribute to a sense of place – in this case the reality within the book. Although it is not imperative that the musicians read the original text, it is however important that they read the abstract and programme notes. Of paramount importance is that each musician enters into the spirit of the piece.
Each musician auralises a response through improvisation using their voice or their instrument.
At any given moment for any given duration this improvisation can be positioned between literal and abstract associations to the visual and/ or aural stimulus. This response can move freely across this range, it can identify with individual elements within the collective sound or fragments of visual information; it can be proactive or reactive; it can be dependent or independent. Alternatively the musician can choose to do nothing.
Exceptions:
- No “free” association improvisation; however, this does not exclude extended or avant-garde instrumental techniques
- The recital of the text can involve speech, song, chant, or Sprechstimme, or a mixture or combination of these. This can include vocal sounds, emotional utterance or language
- The texts can be read in their original syntax and context, or as abstract poetry, graphical score, libretto, material for loop, or as a mixture or combination of these.
4. Staging
If this work is to be a digital opera and presented on a stage then the visual elements will need to be considered with, or as part, of the compositional process. In my mind there is no point in having a completed musical score and then slapping on another phenomenological experience for the audience to consider.
Whilst I don't intend to exclude the director as authority on such visual matters, and not wanting to appear beyond my talent, it is imperative that the visual is scored.
I suggest using two elements from the CJA research: 1) peripheral lighting to effect mood, or construct confusion, 2) abstract movement in the visuals to evoke a sense of travel.
ASJ piece should also be set in the round, with the musicians/ operators in the centre - each embodying the central premise of the book, that of the philosophy of pleasure. This could manifest itself in engaging, as a member of the might, in a illuminating duet between two other musicians - a piece of spontaneous magic - or being wholly present in their own unfolding creative act.
Initial thoughts have the audience surrounding the musicians looking at them/ across them through the audience on the opposite side and onto a projection gauze whiich will envelop the whole in 360˚ tapestry. There are some significant problems of air current suck. An alternative solution might be to have this 360˚ gauze above the heads. This will give a peripheral experience; and an option for the oculars in the audience to "watch something".
4. surround diffusion
ASJ will be in quad. The instruments/ voices will be diffused centrally. But the evolving soundscape will have a diffusion algorithm to decide which of 4 quadrants to be projected.
Research Method
This project will broadly follow a similar methodology to that of CJA:
1. synthesis of CJA project into new commission. Funding. Intellectual argument.
2. Acquisition of audio. ev2's Sentimental Journey.
3. Development of software, development of score, acquisition of visual material
4. Devised rehearsals - stealth performance of "A Taste of Honey" in the name of John Cage for the ACMG
5. Private performances to peers - conference presentation
6. Public performance and tour
1. synthesis of CJA project into new commission. Funding. Intellectual argument.
2. Acquisition of audio. ev2's Sentimental Journey.
3. Development of software, development of score, acquisition of visual material
4. Devised rehearsals - stealth performance of "A Taste of Honey" in the name of John Cage for the ACMG
5. Private performances to peers - conference presentation
6. Public performance and tour
Issues: 4. influence, improv and chance
1. Compositional influence:
- CJA
- SFM
- Sinking of the Titanic (1969-) - Gavin Bryars
“All the materials used in the piece are derived from research and speculations about the sinking of the "unsinkable" luxury liner. On April 14th 1912 the Titanic struck an iceberg at 11.40 PM in the North Atlantic and sank at 2.20 AM on April 15th. The initial starting point for the piece was the reported fact of the band having played a hymn tune in the final moments of the ship's sinking. A number of other features of the disaster which generate musical or sounding performance material, or which 'take the mind to other regions', are also included."
- –,–– CIRCUS ON – (1979) John Cage
developed after he created Roaratoria, an Irish Circus on Finnigans Wake, and is a
“means for translating a book into a performance without actors, a performance which is both literary and musical or one or the other.”
He applies a similar forensic approach to Bryars but also uses a system termed Mesostics to weave the text of the book into a new libretto.
2. Improvisation and Chance ...
... (NOT randomness) are still important elements. Whilst I do not understand have each of these elements work, and would regret any attempt to describe a realm of research that is not within the remit of this project; the purpose of improv and chance is to open the compositions up to more possibilities than I would consider.
Also, the dialogue between a random list of numbers called upon by the software, the software GUI and the composer-improviser creates a sense of intermedia collaboration.
But it is the wholeness of the composition that I am most interested and so any formal organisation of this: any hierachy, would degrade the worth of each element.
3. On a matter of form
On the subject of macro-structuration and form these pieces are not concerned with didactic narratives - but rather the flow of dramaturgy (dramatic experience). However, this is a 40-60 minute piece and I will need to consider its structuring!
Also, my life in the 21st century can not be expressed in simple structures such as sonata, or ternary - therefore shouldn’t the music that I create, here in 2010, reflect this?
- CJA
- SFM
- Sinking of the Titanic (1969-) - Gavin Bryars
“All the materials used in the piece are derived from research and speculations about the sinking of the "unsinkable" luxury liner. On April 14th 1912 the Titanic struck an iceberg at 11.40 PM in the North Atlantic and sank at 2.20 AM on April 15th. The initial starting point for the piece was the reported fact of the band having played a hymn tune in the final moments of the ship's sinking. A number of other features of the disaster which generate musical or sounding performance material, or which 'take the mind to other regions', are also included."
- –,–– CIRCUS ON – (1979) John Cage
developed after he created Roaratoria, an Irish Circus on Finnigans Wake, and is a
“means for translating a book into a performance without actors, a performance which is both literary and musical or one or the other.”
He applies a similar forensic approach to Bryars but also uses a system termed Mesostics to weave the text of the book into a new libretto.
2. Improvisation and Chance ...
... (NOT randomness) are still important elements. Whilst I do not understand have each of these elements work, and would regret any attempt to describe a realm of research that is not within the remit of this project; the purpose of improv and chance is to open the compositions up to more possibilities than I would consider.
Also, the dialogue between a random list of numbers called upon by the software, the software GUI and the composer-improviser creates a sense of intermedia collaboration.
But it is the wholeness of the composition that I am most interested and so any formal organisation of this: any hierachy, would degrade the worth of each element.
3. On a matter of form
On the subject of macro-structuration and form these pieces are not concerned with didactic narratives - but rather the flow of dramaturgy (dramatic experience). However, this is a 40-60 minute piece and I will need to consider its structuring!
Also, my life in the 21st century can not be expressed in simple structures such as sonata, or ternary - therefore shouldn’t the music that I create, here in 2010, reflect this?
Issues: 3. Dramaturgical Voice
DON IDHE – Listening and Voice - phenomenologies of sound
And so my Sound Theatre aims to do is establish an auditory horizon for the minds ears to wander within – eg SFM CJA. But more interestingly each individual audience brings themselves to the composition. In a sense my imaginings of Antarctica are not yours, and even though I have been to Antarctica, this does not make them any more vivid or based on reality.
“Dramaturgical Voice stands between the enchantment of music, which can wordlessly draw us into the sound so deeply that the sound overwhelms us, as the conversation of ordinary speech, which gives way to a trivial transparency that hides its sounded significance.
“The Dramaturgical Voice amplifies the musical “effect” of speech. This heightens the significance of the word that has been spoken.”
“In the Dramaturgical Voice … the sounding voice is amplified … the word event is an occasion of significance that is elevated above the ordinary” (cinema, radio, the pulpit)
In dramaturgical voice there is united in the same moment the fullness of sound and of significance as a paradigm of embodied word.
It is this notion of embodiment
“A phenomenology of the voice is in this sense not only a return to the center of embodied meaning within sound but a return to the existential voice, to the speaking and listening that occurs with humankind. In the voice of embodied significance lies the what of the saying, the who of the saying and the I to whom something is being said.”
In Technics and Praxis (1979) and Technology and the Lifeworld (1990) Idhe analyses the process and experience of embodiment of people with technology and instruments (scientific and musical). He describes how musicians “speak” through material artefacts or instruments – in a sense their “voice” is amplified and could therefore be described as a Dramaturgical Voice especially in relation to the following:
“The Dramaturgical Voice also amplifies the phenomenon of the auditiry aura of the presence of the other [previously mentioned]. The actor [musician] amplifies the sounding voice, he projects voice into the recesses of the theatre. This resonant voice is an auditory aura that im-presses in sound. The auditor is merely metaphorically im-pressed, but the perception of the other in voice he experiences the embodiment of the other as one who fills the auditorium with his presence.” (pp172)
And so my Sound Theatre aims to do is establish an auditory horizon for the minds ears to wander within – eg SFM CJA. But more interestingly each individual audience brings themselves to the composition. In a sense my imaginings of Antarctica are not yours, and even though I have been to Antarctica, this does not make them any more vivid or based on reality.
“Dramaturgical Voice stands between the enchantment of music, which can wordlessly draw us into the sound so deeply that the sound overwhelms us, as the conversation of ordinary speech, which gives way to a trivial transparency that hides its sounded significance.
“The Dramaturgical Voice amplifies the musical “effect” of speech. This heightens the significance of the word that has been spoken.”
“In the Dramaturgical Voice … the sounding voice is amplified … the word event is an occasion of significance that is elevated above the ordinary” (cinema, radio, the pulpit)
In dramaturgical voice there is united in the same moment the fullness of sound and of significance as a paradigm of embodied word.
It is this notion of embodiment
“A phenomenology of the voice is in this sense not only a return to the center of embodied meaning within sound but a return to the existential voice, to the speaking and listening that occurs with humankind. In the voice of embodied significance lies the what of the saying, the who of the saying and the I to whom something is being said.”
In Technics and Praxis (1979) and Technology and the Lifeworld (1990) Idhe analyses the process and experience of embodiment of people with technology and instruments (scientific and musical). He describes how musicians “speak” through material artefacts or instruments – in a sense their “voice” is amplified and could therefore be described as a Dramaturgical Voice especially in relation to the following:
“The Dramaturgical Voice also amplifies the phenomenon of the auditiry aura of the presence of the other [previously mentioned]. The actor [musician] amplifies the sounding voice, he projects voice into the recesses of the theatre. This resonant voice is an auditory aura that im-presses in sound. The auditor is merely metaphorically im-pressed, but the perception of the other in voice he experiences the embodiment of the other as one who fills the auditorium with his presence.” (pp172)
Issue: 2. Phenomonology
DON IDHE – Listening and Voice - phenomenologies of sound
“We “believe” that we can isolate one sense from the others; we “believe” that we “build up” or “synthesise” an object out of “sense data” or some other form of sensory atom” … But phenomenological “empiricism” inverts this understanding [and] shows as foundational that at the first level the “synthesis” is what appears. Even a rather superficial reflection on normal and ordinary ongoing experience would show that we have no conscious awareness of “processes” that gather data … the object “primitively” stands before us in all its richness and unity” (p43)
“Within my visual field there is a “centre” of the clearly and distinctly perceived that shades off into a “periphery” of “fringe” of the indistinctly perceived. (pg37)
This horizon always tends to “escape” me as I try to get at it; it “withdraws” always on the extreme fringe of the visual field” (pg 38)
Together (i) focus, and (ii) fringe, make up the totality of the visual field, the totality of explicit to implicit visual presence” (pg38)
NB in other words, vision is bounded by what can be seen, or just about seen.
In the region of sound “there is also a horizon, characterized … as a horizon of silence that “surrounds” the field of auditory presence. NOT NECESSARILY THAT WHICH CAN BE SEEN (pg 53)
“An inquiry into the auditory is also an inquiry into the invisible. Listening makes the invisible present in a way similar to the presence of the mute in vision.” (pg 51)
“Sounds are frequently thought of as anticipatory clues for ultimate visual fulfilments. The most ordinary of such occurrences are noted in locating unseen entities” (pg 54) NOISES OFF
SIDE NOTE Prof Smalley discusses ‘the wide open sonic world […] encourages imagination and imagined extrinsic connections because of the variety and ambiguity of its materials’ – actual or imagined SOURCE BONDING constructed by the listener.
SIDE NOTE 2: Colin Blakemore Professor of Neuroscience at the Universities of Oxford and Warwick and former Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council mentions in a recent lecture "The Unbearable Lightness of Seeing" that vision is largely ‘sleight-of-brain' – ‘an extraordinary conjuring trick that creates the reassuring sense of reality out of almost nothing.’
(Friday 15 February 2008; http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayContent&id=00000000800 )
Idhe: “However, strictly copresent with the appearance is the reflective awareness of this experience as “my” experience. It is “I” who does the focussing.” (pg 39)
“As I turn to “inner” experience in the mode of the imaginary, I note that these experiences may “echo”, “mimic”, or “re-present” any “outer” experience.
“Imaginative acts … implicate the “self”. As “my” imaginings, particularly those that I presentify to myself at will, the sense of an “inner self-presence” entices the very notion of a “self”. In imagination I am able to “experience” myself.” (pg120)
IS HE TALKING ABOUT A THEATRE EXPERIENCE?
Another provocative statement:
What I am suggesting is provocative: that Sound Theatre transcends the limits of specificity that form, material, shape and subject essentially present in visual theatre
“We “believe” that we can isolate one sense from the others; we “believe” that we “build up” or “synthesise” an object out of “sense data” or some other form of sensory atom” … But phenomenological “empiricism” inverts this understanding [and] shows as foundational that at the first level the “synthesis” is what appears. Even a rather superficial reflection on normal and ordinary ongoing experience would show that we have no conscious awareness of “processes” that gather data … the object “primitively” stands before us in all its richness and unity” (p43)
“Within my visual field there is a “centre” of the clearly and distinctly perceived that shades off into a “periphery” of “fringe” of the indistinctly perceived. (pg37)
This horizon always tends to “escape” me as I try to get at it; it “withdraws” always on the extreme fringe of the visual field” (pg 38)
Together (i) focus, and (ii) fringe, make up the totality of the visual field, the totality of explicit to implicit visual presence” (pg38)
NB in other words, vision is bounded by what can be seen, or just about seen.
In the region of sound “there is also a horizon, characterized … as a horizon of silence that “surrounds” the field of auditory presence. NOT NECESSARILY THAT WHICH CAN BE SEEN (pg 53)
“An inquiry into the auditory is also an inquiry into the invisible. Listening makes the invisible present in a way similar to the presence of the mute in vision.” (pg 51)
“Sounds are frequently thought of as anticipatory clues for ultimate visual fulfilments. The most ordinary of such occurrences are noted in locating unseen entities” (pg 54) NOISES OFF
SIDE NOTE Prof Smalley discusses ‘the wide open sonic world […] encourages imagination and imagined extrinsic connections because of the variety and ambiguity of its materials’ – actual or imagined SOURCE BONDING constructed by the listener.
SIDE NOTE 2: Colin Blakemore Professor of Neuroscience at the Universities of Oxford and Warwick and former Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council mentions in a recent lecture "The Unbearable Lightness of Seeing" that vision is largely ‘sleight-of-brain' – ‘an extraordinary conjuring trick that creates the reassuring sense of reality out of almost nothing.’
(Friday 15 February 2008; http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayContent&id=00000000800 )
Idhe: “However, strictly copresent with the appearance is the reflective awareness of this experience as “my” experience. It is “I” who does the focussing.” (pg 39)
“As I turn to “inner” experience in the mode of the imaginary, I note that these experiences may “echo”, “mimic”, or “re-present” any “outer” experience.
“Imaginative acts … implicate the “self”. As “my” imaginings, particularly those that I presentify to myself at will, the sense of an “inner self-presence” entices the very notion of a “self”. In imagination I am able to “experience” myself.” (pg120)
IS HE TALKING ABOUT A THEATRE EXPERIENCE?
Another provocative statement:
What I am suggesting is provocative: that Sound Theatre transcends the limits of specificity that form, material, shape and subject essentially present in visual theatre
Wednesday 28 April 2010
Issues brought forward 1. is this opera?
1. Is this work really opera?
1.1 There are several issues brought forward into this project from CJA. Primary of these is the notion that I may be creating opera. This blog, more than anything else, will probably focus on this notion for I am not convinced that this is the case.
1.2 Predominant in this negation is my own personal prejudice of the term opera and my perception of the artform. Perhaps fueling this prejudice is my understanding that my own work is dealing with this see-hearing phenomenon, placing audition before sight - in fact replacing sight with audition - and allowing the drama of the work to come from within. It is this compositional principle that I fail to see in operatic works.
1.3 A preliminary delve into opera discourse and a brief study of the emerging canon of "digital opera" does not illuminate any new evidence to suggest that my governing principles are linked to 'theirs'. There would appear to be 2 strands: i) the musicalisation of the theatrical act, ii) the staging of music. Neither of which describe CJA or ASJ.
1.4 Jelena Novaks paper on post-opera deals with issues that are encapsulated with John Cage's Europera's 1 - 5 - in my opinion the proper funeral for the death of Opera (in the grand sense). But her paper fails to address current issues surrounding digital technology in performance (presence, mixed media, past-present relationships).
2. Gesamtkunstwerk
2.1 Wagner's "universal artwork, synthesis of the arts, comprehensive artwork, all-embracing art form, total work of art, or total artwork" comes closest to addressing my governing principle of interdisicplinarity and wholeness. But dig a little deeper into "The Artwork of the Future" (Wagner 1851) and it becomes clear that "Placing most emphasis on the arts of music and poetry, Wagner aimed to synthesize works in which symphonic music would convey the subtle and deep emotions that words and dramatic action alone could never achieve" (http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/U.html#anchor1538384) is still an ocularcentric paradigm more akin to cinema.
2.2 Wagner described in detail his idea of the union of opera and drama (later called music drama despite Wagner's disapproval of the term), in which the individual arts are subordinated to a common purpose (wikipedia). But, again, this is not what I am focusing on - I am subordinating all senses to the aural and the imagined.
2.3 Mary Oliver mentioned that Digital Theatre is Gesamtkunstwerk - what does she mean by that?
2.4 Tracing back to the inception of the form - The word opera means "work" in Italian (it is the plural of Latin opus meaning "work" or "labour") suggesting that it combines the arts of solo and choral singing, declamation, acting and dancing in a staged spectacle. (wikipedia - opera).
"Dafne [Jacopo Peri earliest composition considered opera] was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation". (wikipedia - opera)
3. audio-visual paradox
To paraphrase Damian Cruden: when ever we place anything on stage in a theatre we look at it and judge it to be important - to mean something. Therefore the visual element MUST be carefully composed to focus the eye on the ear. An alternative approach could be found in the joint video-opera project with Joe Duddell [link] :
CV to JD
I think the same 'interdisciplinary' approach needs to be extended to this video element. By that I mean that not only does this element need to operate between the music and image but itself needs to be in-between disciplines: the medium needs to be the 'message' and convey the 'message'.
I.E.: a traditional opera is the incorporation of many artforms threaded together by the story/ narrative: action in dance, speech in song, lights in design. As such our video element should be between more than one or two artforms. Furthermore, the thing itself needs to be more than a filmic representation of something else, say dance on film, and instead be a performer use light, colour, shape etc, in the same way expressionistic film making gives a fourth dimension to 'framed' artworks. (Am thinking Len Lye, or even that section in the film "The Soloist" when he sees colours synanesthetically with the music).
Therefore, I suggest we are not looking for one collaborator but a company. Our video should not be a simulation of something else but be a thing in itself, and as joint composers and artistic directors of this company, it should also reflect our music.
The reason for this thought-burst was Ragnhild's email, were she volunteered her services as a choreographer in Svalbard (her brother teaches at the school and is one of our contacts). This made me think about the nature of our video, and more importantly who we ask to create it.
If we choose to use only a film maker as our visual collaborator we will end up with a film and a live soundtrack - not what we are after. My first suggestion was Thomas Riedlesheimer - after watching 'Tides and River', a documentary about Andy Goldsworthy, and hearing about the film he made about Evelyn Glennie, I thought he would be the perfect cinematographer to deal with nature, art in nature, art from nature and the nature of music. He would make a beautiful film; but I wonder if we need a different 'eye' behind the lens - perhaps someone who see's the world with a dancer's eye.
This brings be to the point about interdisciplinary and simulacra. I suggest that embedded within the video are the other disciplines such as the dance of movement, the texture of light and colour, and the materiality of design - to be traditional for the purpose of this explanation. Rather than a (wholly) filmic image of nature, we should be aiming for something more embedded, more abstract at times; something that can operate beyond the eye and stimulate the 'dimensionality' of the see-hearing mind. For example, photography can do this more than film can. Furthermore, I suggest that we all work with a digital editor (someone expert and creative with after effects and final cut pro) to sculpt the work in the final stage, thus freeing up you, and I and our company.
There are lessons to be learned from both Steve Reich’s 'Three Tales' and Philip Glass’s 'Koyaanisqatsi', but I'm affraid to say they indicate an approach to avoid, not that they don't have their place; but I think the thing we are interested in is something much more in-between and embedded.... even if that is difficult to explain or complicated to realise.
4. Are computer games Gesamtkunstwerk?"
All Game Play is Performance/Game Play is All Performance." A manifesto in anticipation of delivering the keynote address for Playful: The State of the Art Game. May 2005. Download.
This manifesto argues that all game play is performance, and there is no gaming without performance. This manifesto claims all digital games in the name of theater. This manifesto contends that gamers create Gesamtkunstwerk. “Install base: Everyone. The entire public. Platform: The world. The entire electronic sphere. If we could make your toaster print something we would. Anything with an electric current running through it. A single story, a single gaming experience, with no boundaries. A game that is life itself.”
1.1 There are several issues brought forward into this project from CJA. Primary of these is the notion that I may be creating opera. This blog, more than anything else, will probably focus on this notion for I am not convinced that this is the case.
1.2 Predominant in this negation is my own personal prejudice of the term opera and my perception of the artform. Perhaps fueling this prejudice is my understanding that my own work is dealing with this see-hearing phenomenon, placing audition before sight - in fact replacing sight with audition - and allowing the drama of the work to come from within. It is this compositional principle that I fail to see in operatic works.
1.3 A preliminary delve into opera discourse and a brief study of the emerging canon of "digital opera" does not illuminate any new evidence to suggest that my governing principles are linked to 'theirs'. There would appear to be 2 strands: i) the musicalisation of the theatrical act, ii) the staging of music. Neither of which describe CJA or ASJ.
1.4 Jelena Novaks paper on post-opera deals with issues that are encapsulated with John Cage's Europera's 1 - 5 - in my opinion the proper funeral for the death of Opera (in the grand sense). But her paper fails to address current issues surrounding digital technology in performance (presence, mixed media, past-present relationships).
2. Gesamtkunstwerk
2.1 Wagner's "universal artwork, synthesis of the arts, comprehensive artwork, all-embracing art form, total work of art, or total artwork" comes closest to addressing my governing principle of interdisicplinarity and wholeness. But dig a little deeper into "The Artwork of the Future" (Wagner 1851) and it becomes clear that "Placing most emphasis on the arts of music and poetry, Wagner aimed to synthesize works in which symphonic music would convey the subtle and deep emotions that words and dramatic action alone could never achieve" (http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/U.html#anchor1538384) is still an ocularcentric paradigm more akin to cinema.
2.2 Wagner described in detail his idea of the union of opera and drama (later called music drama despite Wagner's disapproval of the term), in which the individual arts are subordinated to a common purpose (wikipedia). But, again, this is not what I am focusing on - I am subordinating all senses to the aural and the imagined.
2.3 Mary Oliver mentioned that Digital Theatre is Gesamtkunstwerk - what does she mean by that?
2.4 Tracing back to the inception of the form - The word opera means "work" in Italian (it is the plural of Latin opus meaning "work" or "labour") suggesting that it combines the arts of solo and choral singing, declamation, acting and dancing in a staged spectacle. (wikipedia - opera).
"Dafne [Jacopo Peri earliest composition considered opera] was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation". (wikipedia - opera)
3. audio-visual paradox
To paraphrase Damian Cruden: when ever we place anything on stage in a theatre we look at it and judge it to be important - to mean something. Therefore the visual element MUST be carefully composed to focus the eye on the ear. An alternative approach could be found in the joint video-opera project with Joe Duddell [link] :
Monday, 28 September 2009
Initial thoughts on Video element
I think the same 'interdisciplinary' approach needs to be extended to this video element. By that I mean that not only does this element need to operate between the music and image but itself needs to be in-between disciplines: the medium needs to be the 'message' and convey the 'message'.
I.E.: a traditional opera is the incorporation of many artforms threaded together by the story/ narrative: action in dance, speech in song, lights in design. As such our video element should be between more than one or two artforms. Furthermore, the thing itself needs to be more than a filmic representation of something else, say dance on film, and instead be a performer use light, colour, shape etc, in the same way expressionistic film making gives a fourth dimension to 'framed' artworks. (Am thinking Len Lye, or even that section in the film "The Soloist" when he sees colours synanesthetically with the music).
Therefore, I suggest we are not looking for one collaborator but a company. Our video should not be a simulation of something else but be a thing in itself, and as joint composers and artistic directors of this company, it should also reflect our music.
The reason for this thought-burst was Ragnhild's email, were she volunteered her services as a choreographer in Svalbard (her brother teaches at the school and is one of our contacts). This made me think about the nature of our video, and more importantly who we ask to create it.
If we choose to use only a film maker as our visual collaborator we will end up with a film and a live soundtrack - not what we are after. My first suggestion was Thomas Riedlesheimer - after watching 'Tides and River', a documentary about Andy Goldsworthy, and hearing about the film he made about Evelyn Glennie, I thought he would be the perfect cinematographer to deal with nature, art in nature, art from nature and the nature of music. He would make a beautiful film; but I wonder if we need a different 'eye' behind the lens - perhaps someone who see's the world with a dancer's eye.
This brings be to the point about interdisciplinary and simulacra. I suggest that embedded within the video are the other disciplines such as the dance of movement, the texture of light and colour, and the materiality of design - to be traditional for the purpose of this explanation. Rather than a (wholly) filmic image of nature, we should be aiming for something more embedded, more abstract at times; something that can operate beyond the eye and stimulate the 'dimensionality' of the see-hearing mind. For example, photography can do this more than film can. Furthermore, I suggest that we all work with a digital editor (someone expert and creative with after effects and final cut pro) to sculpt the work in the final stage, thus freeing up you, and I and our company.
There are lessons to be learned from both Steve Reich’s 'Three Tales' and Philip Glass’s 'Koyaanisqatsi', but I'm affraid to say they indicate an approach to avoid, not that they don't have their place; but I think the thing we are interested in is something much more in-between and embedded.... even if that is difficult to explain or complicated to realise.
4. Are computer games Gesamtkunstwerk?"
All Game Play is Performance/Game Play is All Performance." A manifesto in anticipation of delivering the keynote address for Playful: The State of the Art Game. May 2005. Download.
This manifesto argues that all game play is performance, and there is no gaming without performance. This manifesto claims all digital games in the name of theater. This manifesto contends that gamers create Gesamtkunstwerk. “Install base: Everyone. The entire public. Platform: The world. The entire electronic sphere. If we could make your toaster print something we would. Anything with an electric current running through it. A single story, a single gaming experience, with no boundaries. A game that is life itself.”
Sterne's Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
Virginia Woolf's Introduction to ASJ
"A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" by Laurence Sterne was first published in 1768. Described as a ‘picaresque novel transformed into abstract art’ (Alvarez) it begins as a bawdy account of Yorick’s tour by coach through France and Italy, but soon digresses through the folds and creases of an individual’s mind into a world where anything might happen.
Strene’s sentimental journey cannot be found in guidebooks but inside one’s own mind. His poetic meanderings transfer our interest from the macro to the micro, from the outer to the inner. He has no universal scale of values: large open streets hold just as much interest as unobserved corners in dark streets; cathedrals have as much to tell us as does a girl with a green satin purse; silence reveals just as much as speech.
For all its levity and wit the book is fundamentally philosophical, a reflection on the emotions of the heart, and of pleasure, fun and wholehearted joy: “Hail ye, small, sweet courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it! … Vive l’amour! Et vive la bagatelle!” Strene’s approach inspired Virginia Woolf to comment in her introduction to the Penguin edition: “One must pirouette about the world, peeping and peering, enjoying a flirtation here, bestowing a few coppers there, and sitting in whatever little patch of sunshine one can find.”
Sterne's ASJ is therefore a philosophy on pleasure, realized as a story in a linear form. The music that is created from within this book will be 'about' its central premise - the philosophy of pleasure - but will realise it in the best way for music, which is not a linear story.
"A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" by Laurence Sterne was first published in 1768. Described as a ‘picaresque novel transformed into abstract art’ (Alvarez) it begins as a bawdy account of Yorick’s tour by coach through France and Italy, but soon digresses through the folds and creases of an individual’s mind into a world where anything might happen.
Strene’s sentimental journey cannot be found in guidebooks but inside one’s own mind. His poetic meanderings transfer our interest from the macro to the micro, from the outer to the inner. He has no universal scale of values: large open streets hold just as much interest as unobserved corners in dark streets; cathedrals have as much to tell us as does a girl with a green satin purse; silence reveals just as much as speech.
For all its levity and wit the book is fundamentally philosophical, a reflection on the emotions of the heart, and of pleasure, fun and wholehearted joy: “Hail ye, small, sweet courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it! … Vive l’amour! Et vive la bagatelle!” Strene’s approach inspired Virginia Woolf to comment in her introduction to the Penguin edition: “One must pirouette about the world, peeping and peering, enjoying a flirtation here, bestowing a few coppers there, and sitting in whatever little patch of sunshine one can find.”
Sterne's ASJ is therefore a philosophy on pleasure, realized as a story in a linear form. The music that is created from within this book will be 'about' its central premise - the philosophy of pleasure - but will realise it in the best way for music, which is not a linear story.
Funding application with Patrick Wildgust
Application from The Laurence Strene Trust to PRS Foundation New Writing fund.
Artistic rationale
Craig Vear’s compositions have been described as wholly original. They concentrate the mind on a place and its people. His award winning composition ‘Antarctica’, his installation ‘Singing Ringing Buoy’ and his recent commission ‘Superfield [Mumbai]’ push the boundaries of our understanding of music. But they also capture the essence of these imaginary landscapes, and present them in a way that is accessible and extraordinary.
Sterne is recognized internationally as an important figure in the world of meta-fiction and meta-narrative. He constructed narratives that are non-linear and that use surprising and often bewildering techniques to entertain and arrest the reader's attention. Vear has worked successfully with the Trust in the past and the artistic relationship has been fruitful.
Our proposal is to create an experimental digital opera created from Sterne’s book - A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. It begins as a bawdy account of Yorick’s tour by coach through France and Italy, but soon digresses into poetic meanderings, transferring our interest from the macro to the micro, from the outer to the inner.
Vear’s opera is not about Sterne’s book but something from within the book: the imaginary dimension that is generated when the book is read. It will function using the phenomenological qualities of sound, music and theatre - the main concern is to take the mind of the audience to other places, and create a ‘dimension’ for their minds ear to wander.
The staging will be just as innovative with lights and projection focusing the eye on the ear. Performed in the round, a 360˚ visual horizon will be sensorial and not cognitive. A national tour is under development, as is forays into Europe and US.
The proposed work would generate further interest both in the original text and also in the possibilities for other artists to use Sterne's work as a starting point for new work. The Trust envisages that the resulting work will attract attention both nationally and internationally and will be seen as part of an adventurous and imaginative programme of commissions and partnerships with contemporary artists.
Vear's approach to the creation of new music fits well with Sterne's experimental and exploratory approach to narrative. The Trust anticipates that the collaboration with Craig Vear would be beneficial to the organisation and to the performers, and will work hard to promote this new composition nationally and internationally.
Organisations aims and activities
The Laurence Sterne Trust promotes the writings of its eighteenth century author in a wide variety of interpretations, exhibitions and projects. Artists have always responded to Sterne's work - from William Hogarth to Patrick Caulfield (his tapestry based on Tristram Shandy is displayed in the British Library) - and his inventive and humorous approach allows for a wide variety of interpretation.
A wide variety of novelists, painters, musicians and poets have been involved with the Trust over the last five years (including Tom Phillips RA, Corenlia Parker, Michael Nyman, Harrison Birtwistle, JM Coetzee, Hilary Mantel) and the resulting exhibitions have received popular and critical acclaim.
In 2009 Martin Rowson (Guardian political cartoonist) was commissioned to create a modern version of Sterne's 'life and times' in the style of Hogarth's A Rake's Progress which was exhibited in the Trust's gallery.
In the same year 73 artists and writers – including Vear – were invited to create new works to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the publication of Tristram Shandy - the resulting works can be seen on www.blackpage73.blogspot.com. Tom Phillips RA was commissioned to create new pages for his ongoing work A Humument (www.tomphillips.co.uk) - all collaborations have resulted in popular attractions for visitors to the museum.
Statement from the composer
This is an exceptional opportunity to work with the genre-bending author.
Described as a 'picaresque novel transformed into abstract art' Strene's sentimental journey digresses through the folds and creases of an individual's mind into a world where anything might happen.
For all its levity and wit the book is fundamentally philosophical, a reflection on the emotions of the heart, of pleasure, fun and wholehearted joy.
This opera will not be 'about' the book, but will embody it. The music will peep and peer through its pages and people using voice, music, found sound, computer technologies and illuminating visuals.
Artistic rationale
Craig Vear’s compositions have been described as wholly original. They concentrate the mind on a place and its people. His award winning composition ‘Antarctica’, his installation ‘Singing Ringing Buoy’ and his recent commission ‘Superfield [Mumbai]’ push the boundaries of our understanding of music. But they also capture the essence of these imaginary landscapes, and present them in a way that is accessible and extraordinary.
Sterne is recognized internationally as an important figure in the world of meta-fiction and meta-narrative. He constructed narratives that are non-linear and that use surprising and often bewildering techniques to entertain and arrest the reader's attention. Vear has worked successfully with the Trust in the past and the artistic relationship has been fruitful.
Our proposal is to create an experimental digital opera created from Sterne’s book - A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. It begins as a bawdy account of Yorick’s tour by coach through France and Italy, but soon digresses into poetic meanderings, transferring our interest from the macro to the micro, from the outer to the inner.
Vear’s opera is not about Sterne’s book but something from within the book: the imaginary dimension that is generated when the book is read. It will function using the phenomenological qualities of sound, music and theatre - the main concern is to take the mind of the audience to other places, and create a ‘dimension’ for their minds ear to wander.
The staging will be just as innovative with lights and projection focusing the eye on the ear. Performed in the round, a 360˚ visual horizon will be sensorial and not cognitive. A national tour is under development, as is forays into Europe and US.
The proposed work would generate further interest both in the original text and also in the possibilities for other artists to use Sterne's work as a starting point for new work. The Trust envisages that the resulting work will attract attention both nationally and internationally and will be seen as part of an adventurous and imaginative programme of commissions and partnerships with contemporary artists.
Vear's approach to the creation of new music fits well with Sterne's experimental and exploratory approach to narrative. The Trust anticipates that the collaboration with Craig Vear would be beneficial to the organisation and to the performers, and will work hard to promote this new composition nationally and internationally.
Organisations aims and activities
The Laurence Sterne Trust promotes the writings of its eighteenth century author in a wide variety of interpretations, exhibitions and projects. Artists have always responded to Sterne's work - from William Hogarth to Patrick Caulfield (his tapestry based on Tristram Shandy is displayed in the British Library) - and his inventive and humorous approach allows for a wide variety of interpretation.
A wide variety of novelists, painters, musicians and poets have been involved with the Trust over the last five years (including Tom Phillips RA, Corenlia Parker, Michael Nyman, Harrison Birtwistle, JM Coetzee, Hilary Mantel) and the resulting exhibitions have received popular and critical acclaim.
In 2009 Martin Rowson (Guardian political cartoonist) was commissioned to create a modern version of Sterne's 'life and times' in the style of Hogarth's A Rake's Progress which was exhibited in the Trust's gallery.
In the same year 73 artists and writers – including Vear – were invited to create new works to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the publication of Tristram Shandy - the resulting works can be seen on www.blackpage73.blogspot.com. Tom Phillips RA was commissioned to create new pages for his ongoing work A Humument (www.tomphillips.co.uk) - all collaborations have resulted in popular attractions for visitors to the museum.
Statement from the composer
This is an exceptional opportunity to work with the genre-bending author.
Described as a 'picaresque novel transformed into abstract art' Strene's sentimental journey digresses through the folds and creases of an individual's mind into a world where anything might happen.
For all its levity and wit the book is fundamentally philosophical, a reflection on the emotions of the heart, of pleasure, fun and wholehearted joy.
This opera will not be 'about' the book, but will embody it. The music will peep and peer through its pages and people using voice, music, found sound, computer technologies and illuminating visuals.
Application to Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowship
Why do you want to participate in the Jerwood Opera Writing Programme (maximum 250 words)
My current work (since 2003) explores the interrelationship between composition, digital technology and intermedia/ interdisciplinary performance. I describe this as Sound Theatre - an experimental interdisciplinary performance concept combining field recordings, live music, the mental ‘seeing’ evoked from sound and a theatre performance environment. Here the confluence of the vivid see-hearing 'dimension' evoked by sound, the intrinsic creative listening act of music, and the theatre of ‘seeing through other peoples eyes’ creates an aural landscape; a sense of place that the mind projects back onto sound it hears.
These pieces function using the phenomenological qualities of sound, music and theatre and can be described as a cinema without a screen; a play without actors or a set: a living dream of hallucinogenic clarity. However this mediated performance concept raises some significant issues that this practice-as-research aims to address:
- The experience and subjectivity of sound led theatre
- The phenomenology of the voice in Sound Theatre
- The connection between live voice and the disembodied voice
- The relationship between the imagined; the recalled and the perceptual spaces in-between.
Having journeyed through jazz, pop and improvised music; conceptual and experimental composition; sound art, electroacoustic music and composition for performance, I am keen – excited even – to understand how this Sound Theatre approach would work with other disciplines. What is the creative open space that lays in-between disciplines? How do we, creative artists, make sense of this space and what do we create within it?
What does ‘Opera’ mean to you and how relevant is it as an art form in the 21st century?
Opera - to me - is a whole experience borne from a true collaboration of the intrinsic creative acts of listening, seeing and being. Crucially it is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the senses and language; between perception, memory and imagination. Its creation - and its dramaturgy – should be more than the mingling of art forms surrounding a central ‘story’. Beyond this understanding, however, I have only questions:
Q: What is the area of creative, open space suspending the disciplines that opera sits amongst?
Q: How do artists embed one discipline within the other so as they co-exist and become fused and inseparable?
Q: How do contemporary artists embrace the ‘wholeness’ of ideas in opera and allow the dramatic flow of experience to comes from within each individual?
Furthermore, new technology brings with it new means and new meanings, not just in the arts but also in our lives. As society and culture becomes more global our understanding of the wholeness of our individual existence and experience of life becomes more complex, and therefore can only be retold using the different sense modalities working in polyphony. As such, our understanding of who we are, relies on an exchange between the body and the mind, mediating all the senses with the imagined, the existential and the metaphysical. Opera, therefore, is the ideal place to develop this ‘whole’ polyphony of sense, memory, imagination and dream, and to explore these new means and new meanings.
Emails with Dr. Aine Sheil
1. Dear Aine
As Ambrose kindly mentioned my work is inbetween music, technology and
theatre. I am finding that I am creating larger works and heading
towards territory that we would have called Opera, albeit without the
frocks and the millions of dollars budget.
I would be very interested to talk to you about current issues in Opera
(or post-opera if we must - thanks Novak). Would you be free for a chat
over the next couple of weeks?
2. Dear Aine
I have attached the Novak's postopera paper. Not sure where it was published - it came to me in this format. Not an uninteresting read although I find it rather useless to read a list of parameters.
Also - regarding 'new means and new meanings: check out Joe Wachs's work http://hybridpoetics.com/hybrid/home.html we briefly touched on it regarding spontaneous libretto using iPhones.
3. Dear Aine
Cinema as ventuiloquism
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2930005
This is a good place to start in reconsidering the relationship between aural and visual in new opera.
4. Dear Craig
Thanks very much, Craig -- and thanks for the interesting conversation
today! Really enjoyed it.
I've been following up a few ideas too, partly because of taling about
postopera and partly because I need to go back to Philip Auslander's
Liveness in order to extract a few things for a conference paper. That led
me on to Steve Dixon, and I googled him to find out what university he's at.
I see he was at Salford for quite a while, so presumably you know him? He
seems to have an interesting performance group: The Chameleons Group (
http://ahds.ac.uk/ahdscollections/docroot/dpa/authorsdetails.do?project=360&
author=&string=S) Have you seen any of its work?
5. Dear Aine
Attached is a very rushed attempt at a 300 word abstract for the Music on Stage Conference 2010 at Rose Bruford. Unfortunately I have to pick my son up, then cook dinner, then go to the theatre ... and the deadline is today.
6. Dear Aine
the more I seek the more disappointed I become. There seems to be plenty on 'new opera' or op-era or electroacoustic theatre ... but they all seem to focus on the visual theatre element in favour of the aural music innovation.
In order to delineate (and provoate) a debate about the nature of opera in modernity I am finding i useful to seperate it into 2 traditions i) the musicalisation of the theatrical act ii) the staging of music ... a very different play of power between the disciplines of seeing and listening.
For example: http://www.paulalanbarker.net/id17.html (these guys will be presenting at the same conference we are)
http://spa.exeter.ac.uk/drama/staffsite/roesner/welcome.shtml (composed theatre and op-era)
However, this guy is getting closer, although it is still about seeing first and then listening second thus never transcending the materiality and limited subjectivity of the seen item:
http://www.misoensemble.com/ingles/concertproposal/electroacousticopera_text.html
I intend to interrogate the above argument - with reference to Novak's post-opera - and to focus on other examples:
- Philip Glass: Monsters of Grace (1998) - A digital opera in three dimensions
- Reich: Three Tales (1993) - digital documentary video opera
- Rimini Protokoll
- Nick Till - Hearing Voices (2006) - New Media Pocket Opera http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cromt/1-3-1.html
- Douglas-Scott Goheen and Christopher Dobrian - Microepiphanies - a digital opera (2000) - http://music.arts.uci.edu/dobrian/microepiphanies.htm
- Paul Baker - The Mechanical Operation Of The Spirit (2000): a proto-type on-line or digital opera, commissioned with funds from AHRB
- Michael Gordon - What to wear (2005) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_mG5Qt8MMk [BTW do you know Decasia (2001) http://www.decasia.com/clip1.html ]
Introduction
All compositions have a starting point, this one - A Sentimental Journey - has been bubbling in the background for almost 5 years. Over the past 5 years or so, in fact from the moment I applied to Asterick as artist in residence [link], I have attempting to find a way of collaborating with Patrick Wildgust, curator of Shandy Hall Museum in Coxwold. This museum is the one time home and now museum of Laurence Strerne [link]. The problem was not 'what to do', but 'what to do that had meaning'.
After a performance of my music in York Minster [link] Patrick and I sat at the back of the hall discussing my current research into the meaning and nature of wholeness and interdisciplinarity within music collaboration. The next day I emailed PW the following:
Dear Patrick,
Eureka! I think I see-hear it... remember the conversation we had in the Minster about a collaboration between music and Sterne - one that is inbetween the 2 rather than a mingling - well I have it! See attached letter.
It describes that inbetween place I struggled to understand, and yet upon reflection it is so simple: a book embedded in music, music embedded in a book, co-existing, fused and inseparable - the multidimensional sonic DNA of a place and its people from within the reality of a book.
[click for letter]
At the point of writing the above letter I had not started Cape Jeremy Affair, but had always wanted to use it in some theatre type project. Using CJA report was a perfect opportunity to "test" my proposed approach and to show PW and the funders an example of this extraordinary approach. However, as with these things, CJA became more than a 'test' piece and I now consider it one my most successful compositions.
The Cape Jeremy Affair web page
The Cape Jeremy Affair research blog
A Sentimental Journey (ASJ) will have a lot in common with its "test" twin. There will be slight differences in approach, material and general aesthetics (as what is inbetween this book and its music is very different from that which is inbetween CJA report and its music).
However there is another big difference that this research will interrogate: that the composition of ASJ will include the visual element as part of the compositional process - similar to the process for '5 Antarctic Solitude' films [link].
The reason for this was inspired by a surprising comment mentioned by several academic friends: that CJA is an opera. I have never intended to compose nor studied opera so this was a surprise - however the more I inquire the more their observation makes sense.
After a performance of my music in York Minster [link] Patrick and I sat at the back of the hall discussing my current research into the meaning and nature of wholeness and interdisciplinarity within music collaboration. The next day I emailed PW the following:
Dear Patrick,
Eureka! I think I see-hear it... remember the conversation we had in the Minster about a collaboration between music and Sterne - one that is inbetween the 2 rather than a mingling - well I have it! See attached letter.
It describes that inbetween place I struggled to understand, and yet upon reflection it is so simple: a book embedded in music, music embedded in a book, co-existing, fused and inseparable - the multidimensional sonic DNA of a place and its people from within the reality of a book.
[click for letter]
At the point of writing the above letter I had not started Cape Jeremy Affair, but had always wanted to use it in some theatre type project. Using CJA report was a perfect opportunity to "test" my proposed approach and to show PW and the funders an example of this extraordinary approach. However, as with these things, CJA became more than a 'test' piece and I now consider it one my most successful compositions.
The Cape Jeremy Affair web page
The Cape Jeremy Affair research blog
A Sentimental Journey (ASJ) will have a lot in common with its "test" twin. There will be slight differences in approach, material and general aesthetics (as what is inbetween this book and its music is very different from that which is inbetween CJA report and its music).
However there is another big difference that this research will interrogate: that the composition of ASJ will include the visual element as part of the compositional process - similar to the process for '5 Antarctic Solitude' films [link].
The reason for this was inspired by a surprising comment mentioned by several academic friends: that CJA is an opera. I have never intended to compose nor studied opera so this was a surprise - however the more I inquire the more their observation makes sense.
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