Score Spaces Workshop
19 - 24 November 2007
Hosted by Intro | In Situ , Maastricht
Led by Yolande Harris
Guest Speaker Jacob Kirkegaard
Guest Performance Spin with Yolande Harris and Hilary Jeffery
more information: http://introinsitu.nl/workshop
contact email: webmaster@stichtingintro.nl
A Score Space is a spatial approach to musical composition in an electronically extended environment. This collaborative, cross-disciplinary workshop will address the following issues:
> How can the practice of musical composition integrate the techniques and ideas of sound, image and space?
> How can the musical score be transformed for the practice of electronic instrumental music and media art?
> How can interactions between sound, electronics, the body and space expand the musical instrument?
The focus of this workshop is to create scores, which map the spatial interactions between performer/instrumentalist, audience and sound. The scores may be graphic, moving, invisible or inscribed in the space by the movements and interactions of the people. Various spatial sensing techniques can be explored to incorporate motion, location and environmental data into the interaction with sound. The performance of SPIN will act as an example of a score space.
The Score Spaces Workshop aims to create a platform for composers/artists to practically experiment with ideas of score and instrument in a technologically extended environment. Building on Yolande Harris' research Score Spaces, the workshop will provide an opportunity for artistic development through practice and group discussion. The results of the participants experiments and compositions will be publicly presented in the form of a performance or installation on the final evening at the contemporary music and sound art venue Intro | In Situ.
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The workshop is suitable for composers, sound artists and musicians who have worked with other media. It will also be relevant to artists with backgrounds in visual art (media art, video), architecture, interaction design, dance or film, who also work with sound. Each participant will need to have sufficient technical and conceptual proficiency to contribute to the group.
The workshop is intensive and residential, for between 6 and 10 participants. The participants are expected to work with their own computer where possible and bring any specialist interfaces or instruments. Basic equipment including some sensors and interfaces will be provided. Each participant is required to contribute 300 euros to cover accommodation and meals.
Important dates:
September 27 - application deadline (arrival at Intro | In Situ)
October 10 - notification
November 18 - arrival in Maastricht
November 19 - 24 - workshop
November 21 - performance SPIN
November 24 - public presentation of workshop at Intro | In Situ
Requirements for application:
> Contact details
> Short statement of why you want to join this workshop
> Curriculum vitae
> 2 examples of artistic work that support and show interest in this area
Send the above material to reach the address below before 27 September:
Score Spaces Workshop
Stichting Intro | In Situ
Postbus 160
6200 AD Maastricht
The Netherlands
Score Spaces is an artistic research project that aims to discover new forms of communication and structuring of relationships that lie beneath usual practice. It has grown out of initial ideas of extending musical scores and notations into spatial, dynamic and collaborative entities that combine the disciplines of sound and visual arts, spatial and performance arts, architecture and new technologies. It is an essentially a-disciplinary project, combining both practice and theory, and manifests itself in a variety of formats, from group and solo performances to installations to publications. It is the hope of the project that by not limiting the output to specific genres, questioning the accepted forms that divide the disciplines, an understanding of new relationships and ecologies can grow to provide a central motivation to the work.
Score Spaces is initiated and directed by Yolande Harris and has been developing since 2002, beginning in Barcelona, and continuing at a residency at the Jan van Eyck Academy of Maastricht. Three distinct strands have emerged: the inhabitable score space, the exploratory score space and the collaborative score space. The interactive sound installation A Collection of Circles, (Brussels 2005) set up a sound environment that could be influenced by the visitors through the use of light sensors, thus challenging our perceptions of inhabiting a space which is filled by sounds that cannot be seen but only felt and heard. The Video Walks (with Bert Bongers) use a specially designed 'instrument' consisting of a portable video projector and sound, and has been used to explore wilderness environments, oscillating between revealing the real space of the landscape almost as a torch and the virtual spaces of the projected image. Between:Two, Duet for Mobile Video Players (Maastricht 2003) explored an abandoned building in this manner, destabilising the ground and balance of the audience. The Meta-Orchestra (Maastricht 2004) is a changing group of musicians and visual artists all using instruments extended by new technologies and linked together by a digital network. New forms of collaboration are explored in this asymmetric group including the development of a dynamic score system.
A recent frame for exploring these dynamics has been inspired by the figure of a lighthouse loom. It has given focus to a range of questions dealing with light, image, sound and the movement of the human figure, through rhythm, circularity and communication signals. The series of works that have come from this are: the solo performance Light Phase for video, voice sound and sensors; the interactive sound installation A Collection of Circles; the performance score HoWhere_r_u? for turning wind quintet, head mounted lights, sound and sensors; and the duet SPIN for turning trombone, turning VideoWalker, sound and sensors. In each, the normal communication loop between performers, between sound and image and between production and reception, is extended by the interaction with sensors systems.
Score Spaces is a title suggesting collaborative spaces that are choreographed by the inhabitants. The projects create lines through spaces, highlighting trajectories, questioning our balance in these spaces, our sense of ground, of wall, of ceiling, of open space, of being lost. The VideoWalks, the Meta-Orchestra, and the lighthouse pieces create unusual communication loops, extending through the interference of technology. The palette includes: light sensor and sine wave group; cameras relaying across spaces; portable projectors; turning musicians or performers; networked instruments. Sound and light and the situated personality within these; movement, change: the dynamic score.