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 ]