Natural Objects

2021 ◽  
pp. 336-415
Author(s):  
You Nakai
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Music ◽  
Electronic Components ◽  
Performance History ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Complex Oscillation ◽  
Natural Objects ◽  
Merce Cunningham ◽  
Live Electronic Music ◽  
Input Source ◽  
And Performance

Tudor claimed that in his seminal work Untitled, electronic components were discovered as “natural objects” as they were patched in a feedback loop creating a giant oscillator which generated sounds without exterior input. But his description of the piece as “part of a never-ending series of discovered works” calls into question its very status as a standalone “work.” Turning to its performance history appears to only complicate the puzzle. Despite his aim to perform everything live, the proliferation of modular instruments forced Tudor to record the output of his setup in advance and use this recording as input source in subsequent performances. He would later create Toneburst, which realized the no-input principle without the aid of pre-recorded sources. Shortly before his death, Tudor revived Toneburst for other musicians of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company to perform. A close examination of recordings reveals that the same three source tapes were used not only in all performances of Untitled, but also in all performances of Toneburst after its revival. This surprising discovery, along with Tudor’s use of the linguistic indeterminacy inherent in the title of Untitled to solve a conundrum he faced in the revival, is used to depict the complex oscillation between work and performance in Tudor’s live-electronic music.

Getting the Hands Dirty

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 25-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Richards
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Live Performance ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
Live Electronic Music ◽  
And Performance

“Getting the hands dirty” refers to an approach in which process and performance are inseparably bound. The “performance” begins on the workbench and is extended onto the “stage” through live bricolage. The idea of “dirt” is seen as a critical ingredient in the process of live electronic music, and the term “dirty electronics” is used to describe an increasing focus in electronic music on shared experiences face-to-face, ritual, gesture, touch, social interaction and the exploration of devised instruments. The author concludes that digital technology has merely reinforced the importance of the human body and the physical in live performance.

scholarly journals Tecnofagia: A Multimodal Rite

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luzilei Aliel ◽  
Rafael Fajiolli ◽  
Ricardo Thomasi
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Music ◽  
Video Art ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Brazilian Art ◽  
Live Electronic Music ◽  
Collective Performance ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Export Product

This is a concert proposal of Brazilian digital art, which brings in its creative core the historical and cultural aspects of certain locations in Brazil. The term ​ Tecnofagia derives from an allusion to the concept of anthropophagic movement (artistic movement started in the twentieth century founded and theorized by the poet Oswald de Andrade and the painter Tarsila do Amaral). The anthropophagic movement was a metaphor for a goal of cultural swallowing where foreign culture would not be denied but should not be imitated. In his notes, Oswald de Andrade proposes the "cultural devouring of imported techniques to re-elaborate them autonomously, turning them into an export product." The ​ Tecnofagia project is a collaborative creative and collective performance group that seeks to broaden aspects of live electronic music, video art, improvisation and performance, taking them into a multimodal narrative context with essentially Brazilian sound elements such as:accents and phonemes; instrumental tones; soundscapes; historical, political and cultural contexts. In this sense, ​ Tecnofagia tries to go beyond techniques and technologies of interactive performance, as it provokes glances for a Brazilian art-technological miscegenation. That is, it seeks emergent characteristics of the encounters between media, art, spaces, culture, temporalities, objects, people and technologies, at the moment of performance.

From Site-specific to Site-responsive: Sound art performances as participatory milieu

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Relational Aesthetics ◽  
Third Order ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
The Social ◽  
Live Electronic Music ◽  
Three Stages

This article concerns context-based live electronic music, specifically performances which occur in response to a particular location or space. I outline a set of practices which can be more accurately described as site-responsive, rather than site-specific. I develop a methodological framework for site-responsive live electronic music in three stages. First, I discuss the ambiguity of the termsite-specificby drawing on its origins within the visual arts and providing examples of how it has been used within sound art. I then suggest that site-responsive performance might be a more helpful way of describing this type of activity. I argue that it affords an opportunity for music to mediate the social, drawing on Small’s idea of music as sets of third-order relationships, and Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics. Third, I suggest that with the current renewed trend for performances occurring outside of cultural institutions, it is important to be mindful of the identity of a particular site, and those who have a cultural connection to it. I make reference to a series of works within my own creative practice which have explored these ideas.

The Cultural Context of Reception:

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-55
Author(s):  
Riikka Korppi-Tommola
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Merce Cunningham ◽  
Encounter Time

Abstract The reception of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and John Cage’s visit to Helsinki in 1964 revealed local, Finnish aesthetic priorities. In the dance critics’ texts, Cunningham’s style seemed to create confusion, for example, with its mixture of styles visà-vis avant-garde music. Music critics, mainly avant-garde and jazz musicians, had high expectations for this theatrical event. In their reviews, comparisons were made between Cunningham’s style and the productions of Anna Halprin. In this paper, I analyse the cultural perspectives of this encounter and utilize the theoretical framework of Thomas Postlewait’s pattern of cultural contexts. Additionally, I follow David M. Levin’s argumentation about changes in aesthetics. Local and foreign conventions become emphasized in this kind of a transnational, intercultural encounter. Time and place are involved in the interpretations of the past as well as later in the processes of forming periods.

Sweet Echo

2019 ◽  
pp. 179-202
Author(s):  
Katherine R. Larson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Level Of Detail ◽  
British Library ◽  
Classroom Discussions ◽  
Performance History ◽  
Musical Settings ◽  
Performance Context ◽  
Acoustic Impact ◽  
And Performance

Although music was integral to masques, the genre’s visual extravagance tends to overshadow its acoustic elements in scholarly and classroom discussions. This chapter focuses on “Sweet Echo,” the Lady’s song in Milton’s A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (Comus), which was performed in 1634 by 15-year-old Alice Egerton. The unusual level of detail that survives about this masque’s performance history, combined with the musical settings extant in Henry Lawes’s autograph manuscript, now held at the British Library, facilitates a suggestive evaluation of early modern song in terms of the rhetorical interplay between lyric, musical setting, and performance context. It also constitutes a striking case study for considering the acoustic impact of women’s singing voices. Milton’s depiction of temptation and self-discipline in Comus, whose moral message is encapsulated in miniature in the Lady’s performance of “Sweet Echo,” hinges on his audience’s experience of song as an acoustic, embodied, and gendered phenomenon.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document