ic2 (formerly intervention:coaction)

ic2 is a live, audiovisual, beat-and-noise-based performance work. The intention is to create a symbiotic system, in which live decision-making by the performer impacts on both the audio and visual components of the work, but also in which both the audio and visual components can interact with one another, causing behaviours that are not directly controlled by the system performer. There is also an element of chaotic behaviour built into the system, causing unpredictable audio and visual outcomes

Evaluating a dancer's performance using Kinect-based skeleton tracking

In this work, we describe a novel system that automatically evaluates dance performances against a gold-standard performance and provides visual feedback to the performer in a 3D virtual environment. The system acquires the motion of a performer via Kinect-based human skeleton tracking, making the approach viable for a large range of users, including home enthusiasts. Unlike traditional gaming scenarios, when the motion of a user must by kept in synch with a pre-recorded avatar that is displayed on screen, the technique described in this paper targets online interactive scenarios where dance choreographies can be set, altered, practiced and refined by users. In this work, we have addressed some areas of this application scenario. In particular, a set of appropriate signal processing and soft computing methodologies is proposed for temporally aligning dance movements from two different users and quantitatively evaluating one performance against another

Self-karaoke patterns: an interactive audio-visual system for handsfree live algorithm performance

Self-karaoke Patterns, is an audiovisual study for improvised cello and live algorithms. The work is motivated in part by addressing the practical needs of the performer in ‘handsfree’ live algorithm contexts and in part an aesthetic concern with resolving the tension between conceptual dedication to autonomous algorithms and musical dedication to coherent performance. The elected approach is inspired by recent work investing the role of ‘shape’ in musical performance

From talking to silence: a confessional journey

This article provides an account of work created by Adrian Howells over the duration of his AHRC Creative Fellowship. Howells provides a creator's perspective; Heddon, a spectator's perspective. Both chart the shift from confessional performances anchored around speech, to the use of silence as a way to engage intimate connections between performer and audience

‘I’m doing it, but I’m so in the moment…’: An Articulation and Understanding of ‘absorption’ for the Performer Towards an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’ in ‘dance theatre’.

This thesis explores how we understand and articulate the idea of ‘absorption’ as a necessary aspect of an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’ for the performer. By drawing upon pertinent aspects of the fields of phenomenology, consciousness studies, cognitive neuroscience and play theory coupled with Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of ‘flow’, the study develops a lexicon of terminology with which to articulate and understand the nature of ‘absorption’ for the performer in the context of ‘dance theatre’. By developing a focused articulation of the actual nature of ‘absorption’ for the performer in performance, seen as necessary to an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’, the study intends to contribute to the language of discourse in this area of performance studies, and, importantly become a useful resource for the enquiring performer and practitioner. Consequently, in developing an understanding of ‘absorption’ for the performer, in order to edge closer to articulating an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’ for the performer, the work and actions of the performer remain the focus of the study. The study is anchored in practice through examination of the work of three companies working within the genealogy of ‘dance theatre’. This multi-company approach gives a chronological and genealogical overview of ‘dance theatre’ practices useful in understanding ‘absorption’ for the performer, whilst also facilitating examination of individual points of practice within that overview. The companies profiled are: Pina Bausch, DV8 and Vincent Dance Theatre (VDT). The examination of work by Bausch and DV8 draws upon and reframes extant documentation of performance currently in the public domain. Examination of VDT’s work draws on original footage and interviews undertaken by the researcher during fieldwork

Traditional New Zealand Māori instruments, composition and digital technology: some recent collaborations and processes

This paper examines the integration of traditional New Zealand Māori instruments with digital music technology, and the use of these instruments in making new works. The focus is on the work of performer/composers Hirini Melbourne and Richard Nunns, as well as recent collaborations that Richard Nunns has undertaken with some composers and musicians in genres other than Māori music. Aesthetic, practical and cultural considerations in the composition process are explored

The performer emerges in the work of Sian Bonnell

This essay uses the artists PhD and also features work made on a residency at the British School of Rome, funded through Photoworks, UK. It considers how over time she has appeared in her own work and has increasingly become a performance artist. It considers her work as a women artist and how her practice sits in the history of feminist art. It forms part of a longer on going series of articles looking at contemporary women photographers working in the UK

Becoming Bach, Blaspheming Bach: Kinesthetic Knowledge and Embodied Music Theory in Ysaÿe's "Obsession" for Solo Violin

This essay explores kinesthetic musical knowledge: what can it tell us about the music, the performer, or the composer? In discussing my own experience of performing "Obsession," the first movement of violinist-composer Eugène Ysaÿe's obsession. In the course of practicing and performing "Obsession," I have developed a reading of this piece as depicting not only Ysaÿe's purported obsession with Bach, but also with his possession by (a demonic) Bach. An embodied analysis such as I undertake here may uncover musical meanings apparent only to the performer, demonstrating that "the score is not the work to a performer; nor is the score-made-sound the work: the work includes the performer's mobilizing of previously studied skills so as to embody, to make real, to make sounding, a set of relationships that are only partly relationships among sounds"