COMMUNICATION BETWEEN CONDUCTOR AND AUDIENCE: SOUNDPAINTING

Today, in the traditional musical performances, performers play notes and make music according to conductor’s instructions. This is a usual situation for all. Especially concerts which we went to as an audience, when we have pieces down pat or recognize, it leads us to think less. Thus, it also ensures that we engage in an event of a single-sided audience.Soundpainting is the multidisciplinary live composing sign language for Musicians, Dancers, Actors and Visual Artists created by Walter Thompson in Woodstock, New York 1974. Presently (2015) the language comprises more than 1500 gestures that are signed by the Soundpainter to indicate the type of the material desired by the performers. The creation of the composition is realized through the parameters of each set of signed gestures.The Soundpainter (the composer) standing in front (usually) of the group communicates a series of signs using hand and body gestures indicating specific and/or aleatoric material to be performed by the group. The Soundpainter develops the responses of the performers, molding and shaping them into the composition then signs another series of gestures, a phrase, and continues on this process of composing the piece. Soundpainting is a useful tool to create dialogue between not only Soundpainter and performers but also soundpainter and audience. Soundpainters’ signs gesture to community and at the same time he can sign gestures to audience and then they respond in sound. Then Soundpainter determines the next instruction based on the response. By this way Soundpainting brings audience into the active component of the performance as communicate among Soundpainter, performers and audience. This research is a qualitative study and data was obtained by literature review.

ANALYSIS OF SOUNDPAINTING SIGN LANGUAGE VISUALS

Soundpainting constructed by composer Walter Thompson is a simultaneous universal composition sign language which is made for musicians, dancers, poets and visual artists operated in improvisational environment. Today soundpainting language contains more than 1500 signs. In this research it is aimed to analyze (converting visual texts to writing texts) the gestures (moving visuals) in 1st level of soundpainting. Content analysis was made in this study. After the data analysis, it was discovered that soundpainting sign language gestures have common features in real life body language. Also it was seen that these gestures have universal communication language which has no boundaries like language or hearing deprivation

Perceptions of Audience on Soundpainting Performance

Today, contemporary music emerges as an experimental phenomenon trapped in the laboratory environment rather than an element of skill. Modern music, where principles such as specialism and rationality are determinative, has become difficult to understand not only for performers who carry it on the stage but also for today's audience. One of the works done in recent years is Soundpainting, which is based on improvisation and allows everyone to do this stage art. Soundpainting is the multidisciplinary live composing sign language for Musicians, Dancers, Actors and Visual Artists. Presently the language comprises more than 1750 gestures that are signed by the Soundpainter to indicate the type of material desired of the performers. The Soundpainter (the composer) standing in front (usually) of the group communicates a series of signs using hand and body gestures indicating specific and/or aleatoric material to be performed by the group. The Soundpainter develops the responses of the performers, molding and shaping them into the composition. In this research, it is aimed to determine the perceptions of the audiences who are listeners in a Soundpainting performance and at the same time performers in Soundpainting performance. The specify of this perception is important in terms of determine the attitude of the listeners fort he first time involved in the Soundpainting performance as well as bringing solutions to the problem of music and alienation from a different point of view

How performance thinks

This volume questions how performance thinks from a wide range of overlapping perspectives and contexts including practice-as-research, professional practice and the emerging sub-field of ‘performance & philosophy’. Can performance be understood as a kind of thinking in its own right? What value might such an understanding have for performance and philosophical research, for academia and for practices operating outside the academy

Automatic recognition of Soundpainting for the Generation of Electronic Music Sounds

This work aims to explore the use of a new gesture-based interaction built on automatic recognition of Soundpainting structured gestural language. In the proposed approach, a composer (called Soundpainter) performs Soundpainting gestures facing a Kinect sensor (Microsoft). Then, a gesture recognition system captures gestures that are sent to a sound generator software. The proposed method was used to stage an artistic show in which a Soundpainter had to improvise with 6 different gestures to generate a musical composition from different sounds in real time. The accuracy of the gesture recognition system was evaluated as well as Soundpainter's user experience. In addition, a user evaluation study for using our proposed system in a learning context was also conducted. Current results open up perspectives for the design of new artistic expressions based on the use of automatic gestural recognition supported by Soundpainting language

Aspects of openness and specificity in post-minimal music

This commentary discusses my exploration in applying openness to minimalist compositional methods in the forms of inclusivity, democracy, intuition, improvisation and non-teleology. Additionally, I consider methods of balancing such openness with the specificity of virtuosity, idiom and process within my Master of Arts by Research portfolio of compositions. Each section of the thesis details my approach to different aspects of openness and specificity as a post-minimalist composer and how I have considered them in my music, including; contextualising my music within contemporary and historical manifestations of minimalist music and wider discourse; paradigms of role, format and protocol in the musical process; enculturation in the process of musical learning. I have referred to a wide range of academic and informal literature, music and media to substantiate my research interests as relevant to contemporary music and its practitioners, and widespread in popular and vernacular idioms. I conclude to clarify the position of my compositions and their methodologies in a relevant post-minimalist context and their functions as archetypes of a pragmatic system for future compositions

Fugas e Interferencias: I Congreso de Arte de Acción: actas 2016

Recoge los contenidos presentados a: Congreso de Arte de Acción (1. 2016. Pontevedra).Introducción: En estas actas de Fugas e Interferencias. I Congreso de Arte de Acción 2016 se muestra la recopilación de artículos procedentes de las ponencias seleccionadas para ser presentadas en la primera edición del congreso que tuvo lugar los días 1,2 y 3 de diciembre de 2016 en la Casa de Campas de Pontevedra y el Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo (CGAC) de Santiago de Compostela. El objetivo de la convocatoria de este congreso de ámbito nacional fue establecer un diálogo reflexivo y crítico sobre el arte de acción, tanto el realizado desde la investigación teórica especulativa como el que lo hacía desde la investigación teórica experimental surgida de la reflexión de la práctica artística. Se pretendía, pues, poder reubicar el arte de acción más allá de los cruces que hasta el momento se han establecido dentro del contexto del arte contemporáneo, es decir, intentar superar los límites del tema impuestos por los clásicos enfoques académicos. De acuerdo con esas tesis y, para poder vislumbrar la práctica del arte de acción en el futuro, los artículos que conforman estas actas, se han agrupado siguiendo tres de los cuatro ejes teóricos propuestos en el congreso: 1. La reflexión teórica del arte de acción. 2. El carácter liminar del arte de acción dentro del marco del arte contemporáneo. 3. La acción y sus intersecciones

Videogames as digital audiovisual performance

Video games are an ideal medium for creating a live-cinema experience because of their potential for cinematic narrative and open structure. "Performing digital media' as opposed to 'performing with digital media' or using digital media in performance, means to play the media like a musical instrument as much as possible. This is to be able to control and finely nuance the audiovisual and kinetic data stream through live manipulation and interaction on stage. This is, in a sense, to grant the performance an immediacy that belies remediation. This paper looks at recent instances in which the media itself is being performed and a similar audiovisual contract to that of cinema is being entered to by an audience. Thus, the performance or live event itself becomes a product of media technologies yet is indistinctly unified with them

Conducted Improvisation

The purpose of this thesis Conducted Improvisation is to study how a musical sign language can effect creativity, musical interaction and sense of freedom in ensemble playing by analyzing Extemporize, a sign system I have developed, with the further goal to explore the pedagogical potential in this practice. The research questions that drive this study are: In what ways does the sign system effect creativity and playfulness in improvised performance? In what ways does the sign system affect the sense of freedom in ensemble performance? In what ways does the sign system effect musical interaction? The material for the survey has been acquired through video documentation of rehearsals and concerts and interviews with the participants. 15 musicians took part in this study whereof 10 of them were interviewed. The results of the study indicate that sign language is effective in working with improvisation in ensemble and can have an impact on both freedom and constraint, it has the possibility to strengthen the voice of the musicians and push them in other musical directions than normally. But conducted improvisation can also create frustrations in the musicians, especially if the sign system is not rehearsed enough.Formålet med denne afhandling Conducted Improvisation er at undersøge, hvordan et musikalsk tegnsprog kan påvirke kreativitet, musikalsk interaktion og følelse af frihed i sammenspilssituationer ved at analysere Extemporize, et tegnsprog jeg har udarbejdet, med yderligere det formål at udforske det pædagogiske potentiale i denne praksis. Forskningsspørgsmålene, der driver denne undersøgelse er: På hvilke måder påvirker tegnsproget kreativitet og leg i improvisation? På hvilke måder påvirker tegnsproget følelsen af frihed i sammenspilssituationer? Hvilken effekt har tegnsproget på musikalsk interaktion? Materialet til undersøgelsen er erhvervet gennem video dokumentation af øvere og koncerter og interviews med deltagerne. 15 musikere deltog i denne undersøgelse, hvoraf 10 af dem blev interviewet. Resultaterne af undersøgelsen viser, at tegnsproget er effektiv i arbejdet med improvisation i ensemble og kan have en indvirkning på både frihed og tvang, det har mulighed for at styrke musikernes stemmer og skubbe dem i andre musikalske retninger end normalt. Men dirigeret improvisation kan også skabe frustrationer i musikerne, især hvis tegnsproget ikke er øvet nok