<x-charset iso-8859-1>dear all, Palindrome is performing "Seine Hohle Form" in Baton Rouge on March 1, at 8 p.m. at SEAMUS >The Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States is pleased to >announce the SEAMUS 2001 National Conference, to be held March 1-3, 2001 >at Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Hosted by the >Music & Art Digital Studio (the MADstudio) and the LSU School of Music, >the conference will be held in conjunction with LSU's 56th Festival of >Contemporary Music. The theme of the conference will be: Music in the >Digital Age. http://seamus.lsu.edu/seamus2001/ concerning the work "...Hohle Form...": The multi-dimensional mapping of movement-to-sound within an integrated Eyecon and Max Environment. Performance of "Seine Hohle FormÖ" (2000). Abstract The use of choreographic gesture as a control component in music composition/performance for dance has, until recently, been largely limited to the simplest of musical parameters: presence or absence of sound, volume control and, more rarely, pitch control. Although much work has been done recently in the world of computer music by composers/performers developing and composing for gestural controllers the world of dance has remained largely isolated from these developments. The sophistication and accessibility of current digital signal processing technology (i.e. Max and jMax), together with comparable developments in video image processing as a source of gestural information (i.e. PALINDROME's EyeCon system), now bring a greater level of expressive possibilities to interactive dance performance. Working alternately in N¸rnberg, Germany, and Denton, Texas, USA, PALINDROME and CEMI have explored these possibilities by constructing a dance-specific vocabulary of gesture mappings between movement-recognition and real-time DSP. In doing so we believe we have opened the door to a genuinely multi-dimensional model for mapping dance movement to sound in an interactive performance setting. In order to bring this work to the next level, we are hereby proposing a two-week residency at IRCAM in order to collaborate with the Real-Time Systems Team (jMAX). The technical goal for the project would be to begin an integration of our current work (done on a PC running EyeCon and a Macintosh running MAX/MSP) into a unified jMAX environment. This integration could, in a sense, be seen as a natural extension to the still in-progress ESCHER system; we are tending toward a multi-layered approach to the mapping problem that would allow for interactive navigation between different mapping configurations. ESCHER was conceived to allow such navigation between parameter spaces. While the basic technical system has been operational now for some months (and has been tested in recent performances in Munich), there remains much work to be done on both the technical and artistic aspects of the project. Most importantly, a design process must be devised for the myriad possible mappings between movement and sound parameters. In fact, this problem lies at the heart of the interactive paradigm, for only if the association between movement and sound has an inherent intelligibility can one hope to create effectual works within the context of such a system. Collaboration between interactive composers, choreographers and developers in the development process is crucial to the creation of artistically viable interactive technologies like these. Theoretical Concerns In this research project we will address the artistic, aesthetic as well as technical issues that arise when choreographers and composers collaborate using interactive dance systems. Our objective is two-fold: 1. To create a more sensitive, articulate and "intuitive" system. This means refinements in sensors, filters, interface environment and output processors. 2. To begin to create a language of dance gesture-to-music synthesis mapping strategies that address the fundamental problem common to most intermedia pieces that place dancers in the role of musical performers: namely, how to create an interdisciplinary work that succeeds from both the choreographic and compositional perspectives? Answering this second question requires an understanding of the different-and potentially conflicting-goals that drive composers and choreographers. In the past, traditional models of collaboration have subjugated either dance or music, or sidestepped the question altogether by removing all correlation between movement and sound. With the advent of contemporary video tracking technology and real-time DSP a new opportunity exists: composers and choreographers can now work simultaneously to create a work that uses movement to generate sound. This new interactive model raises several aesthetic and technical questions. In order to address these questions, we use as a case study our collaborative work "...seine hohle Form..." for solo dancer, custom-built EyeCon video tracking system, and real-time synthesis environment. In particular, we have concentrated on the notion of "gestural coherence"; that is, the perceptual coherence between sound and the movement that generates it. The importance of this point is often overlooked-without an intuitively functioning intermedia correlation, the concept of "interactive" becomes superfluous at best. While too strict a coherence is banal, clearly too subtle a correlation fails to be truly interactive, and the audience is left out of any genuine experience of interactivity. Within the context of this larger experiment, certain postulations are made: o An emergent integrity arises when the relationship between these two systems is "believable". o Believability depends upon gestural coherence. o Gestural coherence is achieved through a system of mapping that mediates the two parallel structural systems (musical and choreographic). o Musical structure emerges from dance gesture through a schema that provides for a mixture of the definable gesture-to-synthesis parameter mappings. Research and Performance-team members: Joseph Butch Rovan (rovan@music.unt.edu) Joseph Butch Rovan is a composer and performer on the faculty of the College of Music at the University of North Texas, where he directs CEMI, the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia. Prior to joining UNT he founded the computer music studios at Florida State University, and was "compositeur en recherche" at the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris, where he co-founded the "Groupe de Discussion ý propos du Geste Musical". Robert Wechsler, Frieder Weiþ and Helena Zwiauer (Palindrome IMPG) contact and information: see below ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Robert Wechsler Artistic Director PALINDROME Inter-media Performance Group Johannisstr. 42 90419 N¸rnberg fon: 49 911 39 74 72 fax: 49 911 377 8311 mobile: 49 179 511 0400 http://www.palindrome.de </x-charset>
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