PROGRAMME CONTINUED..
Mittsu no Yugo
Ian Whalley
The soundtrack is a live recording of telemusic concert for MUSICACOUSTIC10, 22-28 October, Central
Conservatory of Music, Beijing. The work was made in real-time by co-located performers in New
Zealand, China and Canada through Internet2, and using New Zealand’s KAREN network.
Performers:
Hamilton, New Zealand
Ian Whalley: Max/MSP patches, pedals, wind synth
Lara Hall: Violin and looper
Hannah Gilmour: Spectral beds, rhythm and effects
Richard Nunns ©. Short Taonga Puoro samples
Calgary, Canada
David Larsen: Buffalo drum
Beijing, China
Bruce Gremo: Shakuhachi
In Mittsu no Yugo, the composer prescribed the general structure, shape and broad motives for the
work. Performers then generate and amalgamate sectional content in a conversational manner. The
approach allows for different outcomes from each performance, and additional performer/’instruments’
to take part and negotiate new outcomes. The work explores sound-based composition/performance
/machine agent approaches to composition/performance that are suited to Internet2 music making,
while considering and exploring the juxtaposition and synthesis of regional aesthetics in the creation of
new compositions.
Graphic Rendition
Lecturers: Polly Cantlon, Keith Soo
Students: Scott Alonzo, Stephen Sherman, Hamish Williams
Upon getting the score, the Graphic Team met up to review the composition with the composer. The first
step toward the graphic rendition was in understanding the gestures and characteristics of each
instrument in the layered performance. We then arrived at graphic themes that would fit with the
structure and shape of the work. Finally, we assigned a unique and pertinent form and movement to go
with each instrument, and cured these to the score. The result is our graphics based visual interpretation
of the music. This is the team’s first attempt at a visual music score.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Simon Laing
Grant Sherson
Luke Jacobs
Brad Thomson
Kim Johnson
APA Staff
University of Waikato Cultural Committee
Cover image: aplaceintime_7 Nicholas Vanderschantz, Lecturer Computer Graphic Design
ArtzElectro
A trick
ArtzElectro focuses on creative works that combine different electronic media, and works that combine
electronic media with real-time performance.
This third concert includes input from Computer Graphic Design, Screen and Media, Computer Science
Dance and Music. The focus was to create new works from new connections and relationships, and so
this collection is partly an outcome of each project workshop taking part.
The introduction of the new Bachelor of Media and Creative Technologies degree in 2010 is enhancing
further dialogue and combined research outputs between the creative and performing arts on campus.
ArtzElectro also aims to encourage and showcase some of this emerging interdisciplinary collaboration.
The intention of ArtzElectro is to build an event that draws on local, national and international
contributions. Going forward, the aim is to combine in real-time the real space of our campus facilities
with online spaces, virtual or real, accessed through the internet.
Ian Whalley, Director
.cyclic. (work-in-progress)
Dancer/Choreographer: Marie Hermo Jensen (stellaris dance nz)
Soundscape: Jeremy Mayall
Co-ordinators: Doris Jung, Simon Laing
Graphics Team: Simon Laing, Ime Botes, Emma Martin
Assistants: Doris Jung, Dacre Denny, Paul Hunkin, Andreas Löf, Nicola Tims
Supported by: Computer Science, Stellaris DanceTheatre, University of Waikato Summer Scholarship
Programme, Music Programme, Range and Imaging Research Group.
‘Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.’
- Seneca
The concepts behind this piece originated in research conducted as part of the Summer Scholarship
Programme by Simon Laing, Doris Jung, Nicola Tims, Andreas Löf, Paul Hunkin and Marie Hermo Jensen.
The research was to investigate dance-driven 3-D camera interaction to be used as a tool for the creation
of a holistic piece of art for an enriched performance experience. This performance uses the
commercially available Kinect camera (Microsoft). The Kinect camera features two cameras in a single
housing: a VGA 640x480 pixel colour camera and an infrared system producing a 640x480 depth image.
This piece explores the ideas of creation within a cyclic system, from birth to death to re-birth. The
collaboration between the different media expands beyond research and the creative process into the
performance, where the dancer influences both the sound you hear and the images you see in real time.
After Sengai
This shadow puppetry is performance by the Tang shan shadow troupes, it uses opaque of often
artiucalated figures in front of an illuminated backdrop to create the illusion of moving images. The
music for shadow puppetry is often performed live on traditional Chinese instruments, but rarely do you
find electroacoustic accompaniment. A more contemporary way of setting music to the shadow play is
then explored in my work. The story of the film can be broken down into roughly five different sections:
A, B, C, D, E. Therefore, the film score if based on these five parts that are made up of five motives: crane
plays with frogs, turtle suddenly attacks baby frog, crane is relaxing in the pond, first fight between crane
and turtle, and crane catches the turtle. For this work some of the crane, water and soft wind samples
using a pipa, Erhu (Chinese violin) and an Indian flute. These were all recorded in a sound proof studio at
the University of Waikato. The work was developed using Albeton live, Metasynth and Korg synthesizer.
The piece was mastered on Protools HD.
Lucid
PROGRAMME
film by Bevin Yeatman, music by Elizabeth de Vegt
This film is a response to the painting The Universe, by the Zen master Sengai (1750-1837). The painting
is simple and audacious and still remains, today, a work of intrigue and contemplation. Sengai suggests
the circle captures the infinite, the triangle the beginning of form and the rectangle, the doubling of
triangles, and, therefore, multiplication of form. These geometric figures are a gesture towards the
practice of framing: a framing that so often assumes a rectangular border, but shouldn’t; a framing that
implies a focusing but shouldn’t; a framing that often is a stabilising element but certainly isn’t. The film
plays with the possibilities of framing, with capture and escape, and considers the nature of metaphor
and its contribution to the way we frame. The fire as motif is material substance and immaterial
metaphor, simply suggesting that the universe is always changing, creating and destroying.
Maggie Yue
Soundtrack for Chinese shadow puppetry
Karen Barbour with Sasha McLaren and Jeremy Mayall
Lucid is a second short digital dance that represents some of the 'findings' from my recent creative
practice research project called ‘Dance Site’. In the overall research I aimed to explore how digital dance
making could be re-conceptualized from a dancer’s perspective (the first digital dance Liminal was shown
in 2010). In editing Lucid, also based on movement from improvisational performance, I was interested in
lucid art, poetically described by Fariba Bogzaran as offering "a visual representation of particular kinetic,
non-representational, light-filled and numious dream experiences that are otherwise difficult to
describe" (2003, p.29). Working with Sasha McLaren to edit this digital dance, we explored
choreographic editing more intentionally, populating the frame with multiple, light-filled images
appearing and disappearing within a larger negative space and using speed changes and repetition in the
movement. The work was completed with Jeremy Mayall's composition in which he responded to our
editing practices in sound. I recently showed this work at The Sixth International Conference on Arts in
Society in Berlin.
When we Fell for flute and backing track
Michael Williams
Adrianna Lisa -flute
Vocal tracks recorded at Radio NZ
When we fell from grace, from humanity, from ourselves
The horrors of WWII remain very much part of the Polish collective memory. Like many of her
countrymen Adrianna Lis does not wish for the events of WWII and in particular the treatment of the
Polish people to be forgotten or diluted by time and thereby diminishing the significance. When we Fell is
in essence a reflection of this idea. A fall from grace; a fall from humanity; a falling away from oneself. I
have tried to capture in some parts of this piece a sense of childlike innocence that in a strange way
highlights the dismay at the loss of humility. The folk-like melody that runs through it is an adaptation of
the Polish song To Ostatnia Niedziela (Last Sunday), which had the dubious honour of often being played
while Jewish prisoners were led to their deaths in the gas chambers. The vocal track is a recording of
some of the text from this song but toward the end a passage from Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra is
quoted in Polish.
Now I am light
Now do I fly
Now do I see myself under myself
Now there danceth a god in me