the rites of spring at RFH- stereoscopic video, dance and orchestra

in exploring the relationship between time based media and visual performance, thought back to this which i saw in june at royal festival hall.

from the south bank website link sent in June 2007 (link no longer live)

'A UK premiere. Digital artist Klaus Obermaier, conductor Marin Alsop and the London Philharmonic Orchestra create a 21st-century realisation of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

A unique audio-visual experience, the audience wear 3D glasses to experience fascinating distorted visual effects dictated by Stravinsky's innovative score and the movements of dancer Julia Mach. Electronic sensors and cameras pick up changes in the dynamic and tempo of the music, which trigger changes in the virtual interpretation of the work.

Modern masterpieces Arcana by Edgard Varèse and Prelude from Akhnaten by Philip Glass complete the evening. '


most people were speechless afterwards...but was this for the dazzling special effects taking you back to the childhood delights of seeing jaws in 3D? more than any sense of a mutually beneficial audio-visual relationship? this was a live video experience with the screen above the orchestra and figure moving in 3D on it, reaching out and feeling like a whispering distance to your face. the formalities and traditions of the orchestra, lead violin arriving last to applause,conductor then taking his stand seemed in very stark contrast to the seductive state of the art visuals, but maybe that was the point.i have no doubt that the majority of the audience seemed to be there for the latter ear wigging on conversations later in the bar. i have found these views online;

from the independent;

'The pity is that, agape at the visuals, you don't give the music the attention it deserves. The LPO's [london philharmonic orchestra] playing, under the spunky direction of Marin Alsop, was technically and texturally superlative, yet even at its most tumultuous I was only partially aware of its details: proof if any were needed that the sense of sight dominates the other senses whenever it can. Obermaier hopes that his Rite will stimulate questions about "authenticity of experience" in modern life. However, I'm not so sure. But, that doesn't detract from his dazzling achievement.'

i am very struck by this 'sense of sight dominates the other senses whenever it can.' needs further exploration. i did myself find the level of awe and wonderment in engaging with the digital trickery meant, sadly, i stopped listening after a while.

from guardian unlimited;

'The wow factor turns even more intense when the "floor" on which the virtual Mach dances tilts and her body is pitched into space, looming so far towards us that her hands appear to touch us, then retreating so far back she seems a dot in apocalyptic emptiness.

The disappointment, however, is that Obermaier has only a limited interest in following the dramatic logic of the score. He has effects aplenty, making Mach's body dissolve into galaxies of stars, sending a roaring wave of patterned light across Stravinsky's climactic finale. But because there is no developing structure to his choreography or image-making, this Rite ends up being about precocious trickery. Obermaier may be a master of the digital arts, yet when it comes to delivering their emotional or theatrical potential he is still an apprentice.'

the simplicity of movement of the full figure, circling with ribbons on the screen was beautiful, very fluid and worked easily with the music. the problem i had was the doubled ended foot things (no photos i could find on ole google) some loosely dada-derivative, seem to verge on the ridiculous and lost it for me. the 3D grid flowing tossing the figure also hinted more of homogenised computer simulation kelly lebrock in weird science than embodying a tumultuous ride aurally.

none-the-less a tremendous experience of whats happening in contemporary cross-arts practice, and its to be commended that the royal festival hall and the london symphony orchestra took this leap and brought in, i would imagine, quite a new audience.i would say watch this space, i hope that the fusion will continue to develop in more directly beneficial ways and that all the relevant senses are considered.... i will always continue to advocate that the visual effect must be well considered and develop a concept/narrative/collage of significance to the accompanying performance...in a one-click digital artwork culture of neon glow filters (grrr don't get me going now) its always a grave danger that as cheap effects are more and more 'free' and accessable to all (its amazing how many digital artists are popping up with little understanding of the visual image) effects are taking over artistic merit.....don't digital-pop-art-warhol-style-face me now...

shibboleth, participating in the crack at the tate modern....

now full of the world of participation,and other ways of exploring this, enjoyed watching and ear wigging on others interactions and discussions about this crack the whole length of the turbine hall. it seemed to be small children that were most eager to get their foot/head/ toy down inside it and be photographed. Would be good to go back and record this more. Looking at how people had recorded this on youtube, I found this i minute, walk the crack video- its weird but i would have started from entrance to back i.e. as crack opened up



From Tate website;

'Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth is the first work to intervene directly in the fabric of the Turbine Hall. Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur. Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built.'

participation in a new way, a public art piece you can get right inside, no red tape.

this link also talks about peoples interactions with what has the nickname doris's crack, saying one old lady fell down it as she thought it was painted on and about other casualties. it is interesting in a health and safety, risk assessment bonkers society that this work is so openly there to inadvertently fall into, a crack this size on a pavement would have huge barriers around it sealing it off, but i guess this also points to that obsession in our culture.

Contextual Connections- Peter Richards- Pinhole performances

ok- so following a cross-course tutorial in which the link between my thoughts on linking photography and performance was questioned (which has meant that, rightly so in retrospect,now i have to really get on with considerations in a much more direct way what this connection means, what is this world in between? and how is there a purposeful link between the act of recording and/or process of image making/ engagement with photograph as a performative act in some way to start to make connected work and try to avoid mis-communication) i have started more looking back at the work of others', exploring one aspect of my proposed learning agreement for traditional photography. i must also get on with camera lucida:) i have been looking at whether anyone else had been exploring this with particular reference to pinhole photography and performance, and so peter richards popped up. i remembered having seen a copy of this work a few years ago. although lengthy the text describing his work on his website shows his whole playful process of staging long pinhole exposures in various locations and various engagements with participants.this work was written in a fantastic account linking with a photo booth art work in joshua sofaers essay, conflict of interest: performance as a spectator sport he writes; 'the camera is the performative sculptural mechanism which facilitates the performance. The giant cardboard obscura ........ [is] site (as the stage in theatre) and source (the text - the actors) of the work.' I need to come back to this text, examining its realtion to camera lucida. i should also consider how this work connects with the ideas explored in our frenchmottershead participaton project.

Klaus Obermaier again......

ok, so here's the article my collaborative project guru (sedna stories) and great friend kerry andrew wrote as a review for spnm (society for promotion oif new music);

June 26th, 2007

Royal Festival Hall, London

RITES

Marin Alsop conductor

Julia Mach dancer

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Tonight's much-hyped concert trumpeted the marrying of old and new: ancient rites and cutting-edge technology in a reinvented version of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. The LPO, under Marin Alsop's masterful eye, delivered a first half of music loosely complementing Stravinsky's pagan rituals: Philip Glass's Prelude from Akhnaten based on an Egyptian sun god, and Edgard Varèse's Arcana, which echoes Stravinsky's thumping rhythms and shrill woodwind, and even quotes the work. It started less with a bang than a repetitive whimper, with Glass's blocks of short see-sawing motifs stacked on top of each other feeling very much like music-by-numbers. The Varèse was more fun, a riotous mish-mash of Captain Scarlet-esque timpani and brass, military marches and chorales. However, even this lacked power; this was my first visit to the newly-revamped RFH, and though looking like a gleaming space-age ski-lodge, I'm not sure the acoustic has improved as much as it should have. The orchestra sounded strangely muted - even with twelve percussionists, the 'lion's roar' in Arcana sounded rather kittenish. I was also unconvinced by the static backdrop on the colossal projection screen - a cloudy blue screen for the former piece and a bright red one for the latter - which added very little visual weight to proceedings.

Still, all of us were there for the second half, made immediately exciting by the distribution of 3-D glasses, which made the auditorium appear to be filled entirely with Joe 90 lookalikes. The orchestra was left to its own devices for the magical opening, and then a solo dancer appeared in a two-sided box to the side of the stage. Her curving hand movements began to create red hieroglyphics onscreen, which eventually took on a life of their own. Mach herself was then projected amidst them and interacted with these abstract, virtual dancers. The novelty of having blood-bright shapes seemingly suspended in the air in front of us was fantastic and this was followed by Mach stretching out of the screen and reaching for us like a personal lap-ballet-dancer. Digital artist and choreographer Klaus Obermaier kept us fascinated, with a series of new ideas encompassing morphing hands, distorting Mach's body into Gollom-esque twisting figures, throwing her up and down on a lurching floor and surrounding her with floating star-clouds. It didn't always bear much relation to the themes of Stravinsky's work and felt like an remote, Final Fantasy version of the piece at times, but for sheer technical impressiveness, it was a night worth remembering.

chance video- eating an apple flickr style

exploring the idea of chance i considered what might be a slightly odd image, perhaps, to post on flickr and what 1 minute film might come from that. starting from eating an apple, someone was watching me and typing into tags on flickr what i was doing...and i was interacting with the resultant photos trying to eating an apple like the people in the photos were....

i then posted this video on you tube and continued looking at the chance connections made through tags...so typed in eating an apple and found these gems....this process could continue and continue makign further chance connections through material posted online

FRENCHMOTTERSHEAD week one, part seven- after gillian wearing

ok, so after walking into shops looking for eager participants, i decided to try knocking on doors, er in fact this just turned out to be one door, ran out of time and paper:( andrew kindly agreed to be my bodyguard in case i got whisked inside never to return. i chose this house as there was an interesting screen with 50s pinups on it and an artistic eyeball thing suspended in the net curtain viewed through the downstairs window.the thing is i approached this all wrong, as the door opened i said hello i'm an artist from wimbledon college of art, which then directed the whole sign he then wrote- he did ask me if it was ok to write that his daughter was a student there, i could hardly say it wasn't though:( he was very warm and friendly, lots of time to chat, asked me inside to which i said thanks but i had a colleague waiting, he invited him in too but i politely declined saying he was on his phone...he also wanted to give me his daughters address to involve her in the project but thought this as this wasn't the angle i was looking at i left it.

made me think that people behaved differently out on the street, at work and in their own homes, which is obvious, but i also saw how they behaved differently. and how i behaved differently in each venue? mentioning wimbledon college to passers by, saying i was a student there, an artist, people reacted in different ways, some how being a student people may have been more willing to help? but what about when i'm practising away from the connections with being a student at wimbledon? my invisible performance give me a new look where no one knew i was an artist, a student, performing or anything, made me think should there be a level of honesty or that that would change the direction of the piece? how public or private do i want to be....would i have got a different reponse if action man camera/ holga/mobile phone camera/ pinhole etc had been my image capturing device rather that the DSLR??? goes back to being (in)visible....

FRENCHMOTTERSHEAD week one, part six- after gillian wearing

in the afternoon, we started playing around with taking gillian wearing's work off in our own way. i started to think about the idea of framing in a frame, giving a greater sense of context that the person was encountered. first stop was the high street. chain shops were less happy on the whole, wanted me to write to their head office (kinda loses the spontaneity) so i approached this local shop....again like in my give me a new look piece, shop workers passed me around before one sucker says yes....this says' i wish i was rich' the fact that you can't see the sign it calls into question lots of things about photography...the exposure was incorrect i.e. by this i mean his face was in shadow, in gillians work you can clearly see participants faces and the writing in the signs, but now he becomes more anonymous..and his sign which can unfortunately only be seen a bit in the top photo, is representing a message shared by many so this may suit it. he was also wanting me to be really quick as people in the street were stopping and looking at him as well as creating an obstruction for those entering and leaving his shop...