Title:
The Performing Audio/Visualist: compositional approaches to digital media performance
Rationale:
The urge to compose and perform works of simultaneous audio and visual material has a history dating back to “Richard Wagner’s desire to produce in Der Ring des Nibelungen the Gesamtkunstwerk–a perfectly unified work of art.”(Revard, 2003) The ability to pursue this avenue in real time has been enhanced by the relative democratisation of the field, the accessibility of powerful portable computers and cheap (often free) user definable toolsets. In combination these tools allow performers greater scope to produce original works expanded into the audiovisual realm: evidence of a true emerging form deserving of attention.
In my position as Associate Lecturer in music technology at QUT I’ve noted that while research in the field identifies the affordances provided by computers as creative tools that amplify ideas or gestures (Brown, 2007), this has been mostly applied to the computer as a musical instrument. The appropriate choice of gestural controller, posits the computer performer in the role of an instrumentalist and implies a connection with spatial and audience engagement synonymous with centuries of musical performance. By contrast there is a theoretical gap in consideration of audio/visual performance as a live art form, yet influential blogs such as Create Digital Motion and Skynoise are full of synaesthetic artists connecting the forms with the resultant union shattering established boundaries of composition, performance, location and identity.
The rise of audio-visual software responding to musical controllers and providing mixed-media results poses the following questions:
- has the role of the performer changed from instrumentalist to director?
- how has this changed the relationship between performer and audience?
- what new affordances are provided in composing for the synaesthetic form?
Holtzman states, “an expression is an expression of its time [and also] an expression of the idiomatic nature of the medium by which it is realized.”(1994, 239) Digital media performance is an emerging area of practice where the interoperability between sound, image, text and gesture is dissolved, allowing the emergence of new forms of expression.
This research project will draw relevant theories from historical engagements with synaesthetic composition: from the colour/sound works of Kandinsky, Schoenberg, and 20th century Australian composer Peter Benjamin Graham; through visual music and expanded cinema to the pioneering live video mixing of Stephen Jones in 1980’s Australia. These threads are codified expressions of different times through different mediums that in combination with a survey of the field will help contextualise and describe the under-theorised field of live synaesthetic composition and performance. It will seek to identify a practical framework for synaesthetic composition and what its determinants, influences and nuances might be. Theoretical investigations will be grounded in the practices of case study participants and validated through its application to a series of original audio/visual compositions.
Objectives of the program of research and investigation
In the age of Web 2.0 where practitioners self-market to user-defined communities the adoption of performance as multimedia practice is a prime area for exploration and as such requires a framework that extends beyond novelty towards an integrity of context, form and function.
The core objectives of my research can be outlined as follows:
- provide analytical insight into the developing area of parallel audio-visual composition in computer based arts;
- develop a framework for computer based audio and visual composers wishing to extend their performance practice;
- demonstrate application of the framework by way of examples that also extend upon my current practice in composing AV for live presentation.
Research Methods
The project has several components that draw heavily from each other.
- survey and document relevant theory in synaesthetic composition, past and present, in order to develop a framework relevant to current practice in this field;
- outline and document the state of play highlighting specific practitioners / developing tools and artists currently working with performative AV
- Investigate best-practice examples within each of the fields by way of case studies informed by interview, analysis of creative works, site visits and collaboration.
- Develop works solo and in collaboration that are informed by and model the framework defined in the research and case study components.
- Reflect and report on the effectiveness of the framework to assist in these compositions.
My plan is to produce a 50/50 weighted project with the field survey and case studies occurring in the first half of the project informing the framework and practical demonstrations that make up the second half.
Supervisors
Principal Supervisor: Andrew Brown
Associate Supervisor: Julian Knowles
External Supervisor: Robin Fox
References
Brown, Andrew R (2007) Computers in music education: amplifying musicality, New York, Routledge.
Create Digital Motion (2008) retrieved October 8, 2008, from http://createdigitalmotion.com/
Holtzman, Steven R (1994) Digital Mantras: the languages of abstract and virtual worlds, Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press.
Revard, Stella P (2003) “Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung : the classical paradigm” from the International Journal of the Classical Tradition. September, 2003. Vol.10,Iss.2;
Skynoise (2008) retrieved October 8, 2008, from http://www.skynoise.net/