Tiago Gati_Immersion, Presence and Drama in the Musical Space of Performance with Loudspeakers.pdf (original) (raw)

The electroacoustic and its double : duality and dramaturgy in live performance

2011

Live electroacoustic performance juxtaposes and superimposes two main elements: the real, present and physical, against the simulated and disembodied. In this sense, it is a liminal form which negotiates two different worlds on stage. In this dissertation I will address some central aspects of performance that have been reshaped and problematised by the use of the electroacoustic medium in a live context. I will investigate in particular three main dualities: the performer's body / electroacoustic sound; physical space / electroacoustic space; and performance / audience. I will also discuss a generalised duality common to all three: presence / absence. Rather than regarding these dualities as indicators of discontinuity, I will suggest that they can help develop a continuum of connections and relationships between performance elements. These connections can be designed as part of the composition process. By investigating these dualities, this research addresses the main elements...

Exploring a Theatre of Sounds

2009

The paper focuses on the element of sound design in theatre and seeks to explore how the concept of theatre itself might get reconfigured through contemporary experiments in sound-centric performance. Sound & Fury is a London-based theatre group that works on ‘developing the sound space of theatre and presenting the audience with new ways of experiencing performance and stories by heightening the aural sense’. (Sound & Fury Website) Through an analysis of their sound-centric performances like War Music and Watery part of the World, the paper addresses the question of whether theatre can exist as an aural experience and whether there can exist a theatre of sounds. By analysing the work of Indian theatre director B.V. Karanth, the paper also seeks to explore the concept of a sound-centric language in theatre. While sound has been an integral constituent of the experience of theatre, it has been peripheral and subordinate to the text, body and spectacle in theatre. While numerous exper...

Evoking the sublime: Absence and presence in live electroacoustic performance

2014

Interference is a biannual online journal in association with the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (Gradcam). It is an open access forum on the role of sound in cultural practices, providing a transdisciplinary platform for the presentation of research and practice in areas such as acoustic ecology, sensory anthropology, sonic arts, musicology, technology studies and philosophy. The journal seeks to balance its content between scholarly writing, accounts of creative practice, and an active engagement with current research topics in audio culture. [ More ] ISSUE 4 PHOTO CREDIT Mark Peter Wright; Exchanges; 2013; Image courtesy of the artist. See Still Listening? for details. www.markpeterwright.net SUBMITTING AN ARTICLE Interference accepts papers on an ongoing basis as well as distributing calls for papers for special issues. If you are unsure if your submission is suitable for the journal please

The Wireless Speaker as Sound Prop: A Sonic Theatrical Interface, Variable Location Emitters And The Negation Of Cognitive Estrangement

We can now use wireless speakers integrated within a playback system to enhance the sonic perceptual specificities of a production. These specificities may allow for the audience, actor and designer to go deeper into aural phenomenological realization of the text, whereby moving the audience both closer to not only a more transparent and realistic perception of the text, but a more dynamic sonic relationship to the narrative of the theatrical production. The auralization of the sounding text and story can be enhanced through the use of wireless speaker technology insofar as this methodology can make more theatricalize that which is already part of your everyday experience. The sound designers implementation of wireless speakers in conjunction with the method of the actor is a very efficient technique to confirm a sense of " realism " without necessarily creating a momentary break in attention to the continuity of the play. As a tool of design, this method of implementation also gives the sound designer the flexibility to enhance the dynamics of space and position of sound in the theatre that may coordinate with the potentials of the script and design of a production. As humans who are use to moving in a space and have the constant experience of sound moving with and around them, the theatergoer too can relate more closely with a phenomenological experience and gives them a physical realization to do so. For example, the audience member will naturally follow the ringing of a phone in mid-movement from an actor who is moving across the stage and staying with a story. Conversely, the audience is removed from the " reality " of the presentation when following an actor moving across the stage and the sound does not ring " with " them. These seemingly minute details of outlining the subtleties of perception make a huge difference when it comes to how the theatregoer relates to a mode of production's ability to pull them into a theatrical experience. This idea challenges a long oversimplified notion of human perception which grew out of a discipline of Literature. It was Samuel Taylor Coleridge who suggested: [if a writer could infuse a "human interest and a semblance of truth" (Coleridge, Chp.14) into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative]. Because of these modern advances in technology, specifically with the use of wireless speaker technology, the artist is now able to actualize or 'cue-in' a " sounding moment " by means pure design implementation. No longer is the theatergoer subject to a distortion of actual acoustic perception, but rather can experience a seamlessness of aural continuity which remains contiguous with the play in which they are observing.

Audience Experience in Sound Performance

This paper presents observations from investigating audience experience of apractice-based research in live sound performance with electronics. In seekingto understand the communication flow and the engagement between performer andaudience in this particular performance context, we designed an experiment thatinvolved the following steps: (a) performing WOSAWIP at a new media festival,(b) conducting a qualitative research study with audience members and (c)analyzing

Seeing Sound: Music Performativity in the Theatre of Georges Aperghis, Niels Rønsholdt and Wojtek Blecharz

Creating for the Stage and Other Spaces: Questioning Practices and Theories, 2021

The article focusses on the concept of music performativity in reference to works of three European composers and theatre directors: Georges Aperghis, Niels Rønsholdt and Wojtek Blecharz. All are representatives of ‘the new music theatre’ which can be defined by the negation of traditional opera and musical (Salzman, Desi, 2008). In opposition to the constant and unchanging hierarchy of devices presented in traditional opera, the new model of music performance is based on questioning established patterns and perpetual testing of new solutions in the field of shaping the relationship between music and other spheres of performance. The composing and staging strategies of Georges Aperghis, Niels Rønsholdt and Wojtek Blecharz consistently develop the concept of music performativity which evokes the idea of Fluxus „visual music” – music which is not only „to be heard” but also „to be seen”. Aperghis creates a type of automated theatre, where electronic devices cooperate with actors and their voices, creating a new model of „musical assemblage”. Niels Rønsholdt specialises in chamber operas and music installations in which viewers are meant to be active participants, not only observers. Theatrical projects of Wojtek Blecharz explore the relationship between body and sound in a wide and multi-level way, paying attention to the audience’s experience. The main purpose of the article is to show the process of sound autonomisation as well as to present various models of music performativity in contemporary European theatre. Simultaneously, the author intends to retrace the aesthetic influences, affinities and oppositions between these three examples of experimental music theatre.

Strategies in sound based augmented reality theatre

In public spaces the individual encounters a multitude of sounds. Environmental sounds contain basic entomic sonic signifiers, banal imperious announcements, passing conversations, animal sounds, machine sounds, fragments of musical notes; all mix within the spaces enveloped by architectural structures to create a complex and fluid sound field that helps shape reality. In my recent work, Interzone Theatre, this sound field is altered entirely. The individual, wearing headphones, enters a parallel interpretation of the sound field that augments psychogeographic affects with fictitious psychoacoustic ones. Using locative media, the narrative unfolds as the individual progresses through the city; encounters with pedestrians and urban features are imbued with an alternate narrative. Here the function of sound as contextualiser of experience is to call the listeners imagination to attention as an active correspondent to the city around them. In such interventions, the public space is the ‘objective’ reality that is being augmented by the listeners imagination, shifting attention and reconextualisation to create an experiential space. This experiential space is site-specific and person-specific, a personified Auditorium. I describe the word Auditorium here as a psychic space drawn and constructed from a Gestalt of perception, an affect of the environmental on the personal; a spatial, cultural and experiential framework that contextualises the meaning of a state of being at that moment. The essay begins with a description of the role of sound in shaping the personal Auditorium. It follows with a basic strategy for the sonification of psychogeographical affordances in an urban space and concludes with an example of how locative media can utilise these elements to dramatise a soundwalk and by doing so expand the realm of performer and audience relationship

Ubiquitous Music, Gelassenheit and the Metaphysics of Presence: Hijacking the Live Score Piece Ntrallazzu 4

CMMR, 2019

Originally composed by Marcello Messina, Ntrallazzu is a cycle of pieces for live score and electronics built on Max, and involving various instrumental line-ups. In particular, Ntrallazzu 4 was performed by Luzilei Aliel on the pífano and electric guitar in São João del Rei during the VIII UbiMus workshop. Aliel’s particular setup also involved a further layer of processing: namely, the usage of Pure Data alongside Ableton Live in order to literally hijack the original piece and open a whole set of unforeseen possibilities that abundantly transcend the original intentions. In this paper, we signify our experience by means of the concept of comprovisation, while we situate Ntrallazzu 4 within the domain of ubiquitous music.