Movement and Sound, Spring 2001
WhatAmIDoingHere?
In my teens I developed a desire to break out of the square meter of
stage
space stingily allocated to a classical musician and decided one day to
take
off on my own with my soloist role in Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre, which
I then
performed with my high school orchestra. I masked myself as Death and
made
motion into part of the drama of the piece by mysteriously appearing
and
disappearing, crowding through the orchestra and mingling with each
section
the score made me interact with. My next step in that direction, while
still
in high school, came about with an invitation to act in a professional
theater
production. There I got assigned a multiple textless role that morphed
between one of a real village fiddler to a virtual soul-mate of the
protagonists of the story of Beauty and the Beast, engaging in their
laments
and cheers, etc. While the plot was unfolding I also had to somehow
play
Vivaldi's entire Four Seasons, maneuvering in almost complete darkness
around
rocky props and artificial lakes, and occasionally operating a
marionette
butterfly attached to the tip of my bow. In the fifty times the show
was given
I learned some truths of interdisciplinary interaction, for example: a
cue
from an actor is not the same thing as a cue from a musician....
It was at Columbia University where I was first introduced to the
concept of
artistic interaction of human beings with technology and I had my first
practical experience with it in the Spring of 2000 taking an
interdepartmental
class titled: Interactivity Outside the Box. Well, there things got
much more
abstract in comparison to my previous experiences. In the final
project I
ended up completely wired and cabled, moving between sleek aluminum
suitcases
(by Thomas Charveriat) containing all kinds of weird gizmos that made
rhythmic
noises. I found myself in power of triggering the starts and stops of
these
mechanical sounds via footpedal, triggering processed samples of violin
sound
(music: Douglas Geers) via three bend sensors and an accelerometer sewn
onto a
silver glove I made from a Calvin Kline stocking. I was also
controlling a
delay-processing of my own playing, which allowed me to establish the
accompaniment to myself. One public instantiation of this
installation/performance piece gave me the opportunity to improvise on
the
sound constellations arising from the suitcase rhythms, the samples,
and the
delay. Needless to say that the way I, as a musician with classical
training,
had conceived of "choice" got somewhat broadened! This time I was not
interpreting a composed masterpiece, and I was basically answering to
machines
and myself only.
OverTime
This was all so intriguing for me that I decided to seize such an
opportunity
again the moment it would be offered. And there it was another
interdepartmental class that even had "movement" before "sound" in its
title.
The fact that it was interdepartmental made it possible for me to
participate,
since I neither exactly fall into the category of a dancer or a
composer, nor
exactly do I know how, for example, to make a Max patch work. The
groups had
to be put together according to schedule convenience, which resulted in
combinations of people with quite different interests. But I really
believe
that in the growing-together process of our group (supervised by Dan
Trueman)
all of us allowed ourselves to be lead in directions that we would not
have
taken on our own. This project got me, for example, to experience new
extremes of spatial boundaries and complexity of movement in
performance.
Space
The most extreme space limitation for me occurs while I am generating
drone
sounds in a fitted soundproof booth (by Isami), where I don't have an
inch
more space (and air...) than I absolutely need for playing the violin
(the
sound is being processed through the sensors that Diana and Liz
control, see
Nicholas's page). On the other hand I have never had as much space
available
to me to fill with a performance as at the point where I am fencing my
way
across the entire stage, stopping just short of the noses and knees of
the
audience.
Movement
The collaborative process focusing on movement started with a bunch of
improvisation sessions with the dancers Malene, Liz, and Diana. For me
this
was an incredibly fun and quite absorbing experience, for not only had
I to
come up with the sounds for each impro, but also react to and interact
with
whichever dancer was involved at a given time. As a chamber musician
or
soloist with orchestra you interact with people and their movement and
sounds
all the time, but no one ever leaves the place where one is expected to
act
from. Also, the installations I mentioned in my second paragraph would
stay
in their places, and while the actors I talked about in the first
paragraph
would be spontaneous in their text cues, they would never sneak up
behind me.
Malene, Liz, Diana and I discussed similarities and differences between
dancers and instrumentalists and we came up with the idea of trying to
blur
the boundaries between the two. What was extremely amazing for me to
see, was
that Liz and Malene in working out a choreography for the duet started
to look
more like violinists than a real violinist! Their movements became
extrapolations of violin playing that made me think that this is what
violin
playing would be like if there weren't the physical rules of producing
sound
by bowing across strings, etc. We presented a first version of the
duet for
our class at a stage when we were still envisioning to eventually be
hooked up
to some sensors to control the sound production via computer. But, to
our
surprise the reaction of the class was: don't add anything, just keep
this a
purely human interaction! Then Malene created a choreography for a
solo
violin section that looked stunning when she demonstrated it. Well, we
tested
it out on me pretty much like: "Can you roll on the floor while you
play the
violin?" "I don't know, let me try...........aaahhhooouuutch!" (Do
dancers
ever get immune to blue knees?). Anyway, you get the idea.
In the testing and rehearsal phase many things needed to be dropped for
safety
and practicality reasons. We needed to minimize the recurrence, for
example,
of the following accidents: Liz tripping over me and my violin, my
fencing
Alex's wee-wee pads to shreds with my bow, etc. But so many elements
also got
spontaneously added, and thanks to Malene's great imagination and
patience we
now have a choreography for the violin part that is pretty much
performable
without ever having to stop making sound.
Sound
Speaking of sound and weird tasks arising from an odd combination of
people:
once the phrases of the choreography were set, Keith had to come up
with music
that would fit my specific movements (probably one of the weirdest
tasks he
has ever had to perform). The restrictions he faced were of the
following
kind: when I spin along the wall I can only use my upper half of the
bow; when
I roll across the floor I can only bow in one direction and not the
other,
etc, etc. Still, he managed to create a "score" inspired by movement
that is
very coherent by constantly varying a few basic parameters (see Keith's
page).
A propos ideas that had to be tossed because of time constraints: one
that I feel especially strong about is an improvisation on breath sounds on
the violin combined with the breathing mechanics (inflation and deflation)
of Isami's pillow. The idea would have an aspect of maintaining a virtual
pet through giving it attention. In other words, the life story of the
inflated pillow would be determined by the musical improvisation.
And there are many more ideas for further collaborations...
