Monday 26 October 2009

Lab @ Brunel Univeristy, 25th October 2009



From a note by Johannes on Thursday 22 October, I like this bit:

"regarding UKIYO, one of the questions that I had was the transitory space (still/ movement) (real/ virtual) (first/ second), what happens is the relational space, the in between or, if you want, the "interval" (Erin Manning's term, from her book Relationscapes), when something, as with the clothes or the bandoneon and your bandoneon pleating, when something is folded and refolded."

I love it. I even feel ecstasy imagining the transitory space. I feel this is one of essences in art. A subtle time/ space between more defined two moments/ place creates profound nuance and meaning.

This applies to everything in space and time in performance. For example, thinking of UKIYO;
What is between Act 1 and Act 2?
What is between physical space and virtual space on screen?
What is between this performer and that performer?
What is between this sound and that sound?
What is between this movement and this sound?
What is between this performer with the garment and virtual space on screen?
etc.

It is like there is magnetic power between everything in space and time.
If you draw a line between each aspect, it looks like a web.

With this way of looking at performance, Ukiyo still need lots of lines to be drawn.

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By the way, the idea of transitory reminds me a Japanese concept 間, ma. It has been said that Japanese people has a special sense of ma. Ma can be used for time and also space. If it is in time, it is sense of rhythm by wide definition. It is not something metric that you can count. It is something more organic and intuitive. But there is the right ma between two events in relation to the context. Ma in space is pretty much same too. Here it leads to Zen culture...

Ma
For those who got confused with my explanation, here is a link for more explanation just to confuse you more.

I am talking about this because of Japanese connection with the UKIYO project.
And I just like the concept so much. It is beautiful.

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From the conversation we had in the lab, I have realised that the most unique thing in our work may be different perspective of sound and space.

Sound that come from
living body: breath, voice, body percussion, footsteps
costume and props
amplified sound from a speaker (and there are different possibilities of its place)
recorded sound from a speaker

Combined with each other, performer's movement, projected image and light, it can create fantastic effect.

What about space and body?
We have live physical performers in space and virtual performers and space on screen.
3D vs. 2D.
3D cannot exist in 2D (or may be can?)
2D can exist in 3D, though it is becoming a cliche to project on to a performer's body or costume, but it always depends on how you do it.
The screen may not need to be in fixed place.

My imagination expands. But it is probably becoming irrelevant from UKIYO, so I stop myself.

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Definitely great to do some actual practical physical work in the lab. The above is enough blah blah blah.

Watch the video above.

So we were trying to make more voice as we move. By the way, this is my current interest on my performance generally.
Caroline lead us to warm up the body, voice and mentally very nicely so when we finished a session with her, I felt another warm space in my bronchus that I normally don't feel, and I found myself difficult to stop hissing, booing, woffing...whatever nonsense sound.

It is great fun!

And performing should be great fun, otherwise nothing good comes up.

For me, the mental and also probably physical barrier to get into this absurd state to start with is the most challenging thing. We have to keep practicing this again. And we will naturally find a way to bring ourselves to the absurd state.

Thanks to Olalla Perez-Hervada Lemus, for the video footage.
Performers are Ann-Laure, Katsura, Helenna, Caroline and Olu in the order of appearance.

I would appreciate any casual comment on the video, please!

2 comments:

Johannes said...

very interesting reflections, Katsura. I believe your comments on body (performer), space and sound relationships are indeed crucial, and it was good to see you all rehearse with soundings. Here we can go much further, if the improvisations generate new sounds or any sounds that are also connected to what happens in the space, with you, and the other performer you might create call and response relation, or spatial relation, in motion.

you mention the 3d sceens. they are a challanging problem, as we had them raised up in the last production, to create open space, but it is not easy to interact with a raise projection image-space, and the screens were relatively small, in the last large space we the proportions/scales were not quite right, and also the dancer could not relate to a specific image (as there were three screens and the performers had not had time to rehearse with the live programming/image improvisations that Paul and I enacted.

here we can make more careful and clear choices, and then also try and see how the sound you generate travels into the floating virtual worlds and comes back to you, or how your sound is made strange (metamorphosed) in the virtual space.

regards, Johannes

Unknown said...

Hi Johannes,

Thank you for your comment.

3D I mention actually does not mean 3D screens- i even did not know there is such a thing.
What I meant was image on screen as 2D, and live performers in space as 3D. I just wondered how we can merge them.

When I wan writing the article, I remembered the work you were doing with Michele and John in Nottingham. Projecting on part of costume. It is a way to have 2D in 3D.

Regards,
Katsura