User:Timoteo

My Craft

My craft suggests me to acknowledge musical parameters and non musical ones as equally important in the context of performative art. My attitude towards the process of composition firstly is to create a core idea of the piece and then consequently to let the core idea influence all the parameters forming the performance, visuals, music and social interaction are then harmonized together to create a consistent dream for the audience to explore.

To work out a complete performance is to re define my role as a composer. A musical piece in such context not only has to be of quality but has to harmonize itself with all the signs and visual messages surrounding it. To that end I need to expand my skills in defining and realizing the visual part of my performances. This involves to gaining experience with set design, light design, fine arts, video making and sculpture. Another important and correlated aspect with the first point is to learn interactive digital crafts as circuit building, Arduinoʼs application and coding. Employing these tools enhance the interaction possibilities between visual and music.

It is very important to be aware of new ideas and conception regarding art while finding your own stance in the artistic landscape. To do that I initially encountered two philosopher that changed my point of view on performative art. To be more precise I find interesting considering performative art through combining Augeʼs symbolic whole and Austinʼs speech acts.

The symbolic whole is the central idea featured in Augèʼs book “The War of Dreams: Studies in Ethno Fiction”(1999). The collective imagination and memory form a symbolic whole by reference to which the group defines itself and through which it reproduces itself at the imaginary level in the course of generations. The CIM quite clearly informs individual imagination and memories. Likewise it is a source for narrative elaborations (commentaries upon rituals, shamanic story-telling, epics) which are given form by creators with a certain degree of autonomy. The individual imagination and memory can influence and enrich the collective complex. Each work of creation, whether it takes a sociological form which is by and large collective, as in the cases of colonization and cultural re-creation, or a literary-artistic form which is by and large individual, is liable in its turn to reverberate upon both individual imaginations and the collective symbolic.

Austin’s most celebrated contribution to contemporary philosophy is his theory of speech acts, presented in How to Do Things with Words (Austin 1975). The work develop a general theory of the uses of language and of the acts we perform by uttering a sentence: a general theory of what Austin calls illocutionary force. Within the same total speech act Austin distinguishes three different acts: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary. The locutionary act is the act of saying something, the act of uttering certain expressions, well-formed from a syntactic point of view and meaningful. An illocutionary act is a way of using language, and its performance is the performance of an act in saying something as opposed to performance of an act of saying something. It corresponds to the force that an utterance like “close the window!” has in a particular context: order, request, entreaty, or challenge. The perlocutionary act corresponds to the effects brought about by performing an illocutionary act, to its consequences, intentional or non- intentional, on the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the participants. According to Austin the speaker, by saying what he/she says, performs another kind of act, like persuading, convincing, or alerting, because he/she can be taken as responsible for those effects. Yet the perlocutionary consequences of illocutionary acts are non- conventional, not being completely under the speaker’s control, but rather related to the specific circumstances in which the act is performed.

In order to apply Austin’s ideas on language to Performative Art it is needed to take into account the changes in functionality between ordinary communication and art. To this end Augeʼs symbolic whole can reveal the functionality of performative art. The function of performative art is to be a conduit inside the symbolic whole, this unique human form expression holds a central role in identity development, folklore development, communication between individual and communities and human progress by elaborating information between collective and individual imagination and memory and other artifacts. Therefore Austin’s speech acts will be forming the performative experience and will operate by defining, framing and shaping the performance. It is important to notice how Austinʼs speech acts are interconnected and strive to form a performance from different point of departures, it is also important to be aware on how organically one speech act derives and reconnects to the other. This aspect suggest an equality between what historically were defined as music parameters and extra-music parameters like visuals, location choices and theatricality. The core idea of a piece goes beyond specific elements and embrace the wholeness of a performance.

As an additional consideration by using more parameters composers merely have more possibilities to define the core idea needed to be expressed and frame the performative experience avoiding formats and missing to express yourself.

By acknowledging the equality by music and non musical parameters a creator can be aware of a deeper and critical categorization of the elements that forms a performance, stimuli with a narrative line and stimuli without a narrative line. I will refer to this two prospectives as “narration” or “time temporal” and “non narration” or “timeless”. To investigate further this duality it is useful to clarify its opposite and yet congruent features.

Narration regards every elements that have a beginning and an end, in another words every elements that function with a hierarchical structure of meanings. A clear example is witnessing an event as the appearance of a thunder: first the flash of light, then the sound and then the disappearance of the natural event.

Non narration regards every elements that function without a beginning and an end, elements that have an inner interconnected structure of meaning and can be conceived outside a time order, an example are the laws of electrostatics. It is intuitive that these two prospective strife together to portray objects both in their most apparent and in their most hidden manifestation, one point of view complete the other.

Project Body Part: Eye Lens (IN PROGRESS)

Our project is set to question the human capacity of visual focus, the question is formed once we take into consideration our experience of limited focusing and Zeno’s paradox. What happens if we were to break Zeno’s paradox and have unlimited focusing, what would be possible to experience? The project will approach the subject from a synesthetic prospective, more specifically by going back and forth from sound to visuals.

Project Sensor: Magnetism

The project explores magnetism from a human point of view. In other words the project explores what we associate to magnetism, an invisible force that attracts or repel two points revealing an hidden unescapable dramaturgy.

As a first stage the team decided to reveal magnetism though sound, this stage featured:

- Building up four analog magnetic sensors and setting them on with magnets

- Computing Arduino patch to read the sensors and send the 4 values as ASCII to MAX MSP through serial port

- Computing MAX patch to read the ASCII code through serial port and re developing the values as volume control for 4 audio sources

This stage brought the team to acknowledge that the system was about revealing something, the system could slowly uncovering a message creating a dramaturgical tension of attraction. This tension was both governed by magnetism both governed by having a message appearing and disappearing.

As a second stage the team decided to compliment this tension by using a magnet setting the sensors by a pendular motion, this way at the beginning of the motion the magnet would briefly pass over the sensors and revealing short data of the message by then losing pendular motion and slowly setting over the magnets procedurally uncovering the message played as audio file. This stage featured:

- Improvising a Viola Sextet as a audio message

- Building up of a structure enabling to have a magnet as a pendulum and the four sensors as receivers

As a third stage I understood that the Sextet was not working out in the context. The Sextet, being an improvisation, ended up being a non narrative message. This caused problems once the piece was put in a conceptual context, as a non narrative message layering over another non narrative message often creates confusion and lack of depth. The third stage then featured:

- Recording of a stanza from "The Prometeus" by Shelley

As a conclusion, the narrative message layering over a conceptual landscape often works the best. The system slowly uncovers the stanza and this process creates a acceptable human analogy to magnetism.

Project AI: Unknowing Painting

Project “Unknowing Painting“ comments on the process of memory, 
it investigates the borders between human and artificial memory 
through the act of forgetting. Forgetting is a creative activity that, 
through transformation and procedural loss of data, continuously 
animates our inner life and identity definition.
 To comment this human condition we set a paper loop 
through an array of printers, a mechanical analogy for 
the stream of memory creation. An image, an untitled painting of an old man by an unknown artist, 
is initially fed to the system, then the printed rendition is scanned 
and sent to the printers to begin a new cycle.
 As we travel through the cycles, as we travel through past memories, we start encounter variations and loss of data, the face become distorted and slowly 
the story and emotions summoned by its shape change 
and get lost in the growing feedback.

Studio on La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans

Forward/Introduction My craft suggests me to acknowledge musical parameters and non musical ones as equally important in the context of performative art. My attitude towards the process of composition firstly is to create a core idea of the piece and then consequently to let the core idea influence all the parameters forming the performance, visuals, music and social interaction are then harmonized together to create a consistent dream for the audience to explore

Abstract “Studio on La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans” will create a subjective recreation of Degasʼs La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans and will investigates the emotional consequences that spawn from the figure. The art work present us a broken human being, young in her form but old and worn out in her texture. These far opposites create a dramatic tension that is both relatable and mysterious, it is this aspect that will be inside the core idea of “Studio on La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans”.

Central Question How can portray a dramaturgy through a video performance by developing my musical and visual skills?

Relevance of the Topic As a classical composer overstepping the formats like music concerts, dance performances and video installations helps me find my own position in the current cultural landscape. In the other words by operating more parameters than only musical ones I have more possibilities to define the core idea of my performance and to frame the performative experience. Moreover I can see the following consequences in being less rigid in framing my role as an artist: • The artistic outcome is less standardized and each performance is an unique experience. • The standing economical dynamics that control and shape the artistic outcome are always applying themselves through a mediation to my projects, as my artistic behaviors and needs are ever shifting. • In connection with the previous point the separation between art and commercial entertainment become more apparent. • My performances tend to expand outside of traditional venues, by appearing in less predictable places a bigger part of the community will be closer to the events. • Interdisciplinary performances and artistic collaboration are common, this increase in circulation of ideas and notions strengthen my network, create more opportunity and contribute to my research.

Hypothesis To hypotheses the effects of a performance to the audience and in a bigger scope to the community as a whole is to talk about J.L. Austin perlocutionary act as it is defined in his book “How to do things with words” (1975). The perlocutionary act corresponds to the effects brought about by performing an illocutionary act, to its consequences, intentional or non- intentional, on the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the participants. According to Austin the speaker, by saying what he/she says, performs another kind of act, like persuading, convincing, or alerting, because he/she can be taken as responsible for those effects. Yet the perlocutionary consequences of illocutionary acts are non- conventional, not being completely under the speaker’s control, but rather related to the specific circumstances in which the act is performed. This communicational layer is largely unpredictable as perlocutory elements regards the personal and social effects that are triggered by a performance. By obvious reasons this layer cannot be directly operated or foreseen by a composer and it contain the more mysterious and precious moment of a performance, the moment a person of the audience interconnect with the art piece. It is possible to individuate attempt by some performances to guide some of the audience responses, for example in folklore dance music there are correspondences between musical gestures and dance moves, as another example in classical music there are correspondences between certain musical choices and emotions. These attempt to control this communicational layer are operating only superficially and, if are not part of the performative aspect and better reside in other aspect of the performance.

Research Approach and Key References Using creation as the driving force of my research I will add expertise, informations and references accordingly to the needs I am encountering in approaching a new performance. In the context of my project “Studio on La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans”, I researched the following elements.

- Musical models: Beethovenʼs 7th Symphony second movement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCHREyE5GzQ), Purcellʼs Opera Dido et Aenea the death scene of Dido (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOIAi2XwuWo), Messiaenʼs Litugie de Crystal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPNkg6CNKI4) referring to his compositional techniques called “stained glass harmony” - Visual models: Degasʼs La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Dancer_of_Fourteen_Years) as it is exposed at Museum Boijmans, Romeo Castellucciʼs Orestea, Jean Vigò LʼAtlante (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Atalante), Christo Porta Pinciana in regard of the conceptual use of shrouds - Technical models: pelle dʼuovo projection technique, Luigi Nono sequence reverberation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Nono), general camera functioning knowledge and lens choices

Literature It is very important to be aware of new ideas and conception regarding art while finding your own stance in the artistic landscape. To do that I initially encountered two philosopher that changed my point of view on performative art. To be more precise I find interesting considering performative art through combining Auge’s symbolic whole (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Aug%C3%A9) and Austin’s speech acts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Austin). The symbolic whole is the central idea featured in Augè’s book “The War of Dreams: Studies in Ethno Fiction”(1999). The collective imagination and memory form a symbolic whole by reference to which the group defines itself and through which it reproduces itself at the imaginary level in the course of generations. The CIM quite clearly informs individual imagination and memories. Likewise it is a source for narrative elaborations (commentaries upon rituals, shamanic story-telling, epics) which are given form by creators with a certain degree of autonomy. The individual imagination and memory can influence and enrich the collective complex. Each work of creation, whether it takes a sociological form which is by and large collective, as in the cases of colonization and cultural re-creation, or a literary-artistic form which is by and large individual, is liable in its turn to reverberate upon both individual imaginations and the collective symbolic. Austinʼs most celebrated contribution to contemporary philosophy is his theory of speech acts, presented in How to Do Things with Words (Austin 1975). The work develop a general theory of the uses of language and of the acts we perform by uttering a sentence: a general theory of what Austin calls illocutionary force. Within the same total speech act Austin distinguishes three different acts: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary. The locutionary act is the act of saying something, the act of uttering certain expressions, well-formed from a syntactic point of view and meaningful. An illocutionary act is a way of using language, and its performance is the performance of an act in saying something as opposed to performance of an act of saying something. It corresponds to the force that an utterance like “close the window!” has in a particular context: order, request, entreaty, or challenge. The perlocutionary act corresponds to the effects brought about by performing an illocutionary act, to its consequences, intentional or non- intentional, on the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the participants. According to Austin the speaker, by saying what he/she says, performs another kind of act, like persuading, convincing, or alerting, because he/she can be taken as responsible for those effects. Yet the perlocutionary consequences of illocutionary acts are non- conventional, not being completely under the speakerʼs control, but rather related to the specific circumstances in which the act is performed. In order to apply Austinʼs ideas on language to Performative Art it is needed to take into account the changes in functionality between ordinary communication and art. To this end Auge’s symbolic whole can reveal the functionality of performative art. The function of performative art is to be a conduit inside the symbolic whole, this unique human form expression holds a central role in identity development, folklore development, communication between individual and communities and human progress by elaborating information between collective and individual imagination and memory and other artifacts. Therefore Austinʼs speech acts will be forming the performative experience and will operate by defining, framing and shaping the performance. It is important to notice how Austin’s speech acts are interconnected and strive to form a performance from different point of departures, it is also important to be aware on how organically one speech act derives and reconnects to the other. This aspect suggest an equality between what historically were defined as music parameters and extra-music parameters like visuals, location choices and theatricality. The core idea of a piece goes beyond specific elements and embrace the wholeness of a performance.

Experiments and Insights from Experimentation To complete “Studio on La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans” I had to go through several phases.

Phase 1 (September 2017) Exploring the core idea of my performance and writing out a proposal for the production. When I was confronted by Dega’s art piece I was drawn in by a specific element. The art work present us a broken human being, young in her form but old and worn out in her texture. These far opposites create a dramatic tension that is both relatable and mysterious, the figure seems in between two worlds. The performance then will create a subjective interpretation of the art piece and will investigates the emotional consequences that spawn from the figure modeled by Degas.

Phase 2 (October 2017) To draw out visual musical materials A Human figure: a dancer will hold the pose found in the statue by Degas up on the stage, her body will be cover by a cloth that resemble in texture the statueʼs skirt. Only her lower legs will be showing under the cloth still in pose. Breathing: the dancer will have a radio microphone on and her breath will be amplified by the PA System, she will be still throughout the performance. On stage we will have a young girl completely swallowed by her dress, alone in the darkness of her situation but still breathing, still alive. A Landscape: a mysterious landscape can be presented to take form as a freedom fantasy for our human figure as a frontal semitransparent projection. The Music: The ensemble will be performing a piece that will take as a model the lament in baroque opera. The piece will be recorded and edited to be then deconstructed and made to interact with the final dramaturgy.

Phase 3 (October 2017) To harmonize and changing the materials together by creating interactions. Creating different possible dramaturges within the limitation of the production Throughout the process of making the piece I have been experimenting with several interactions between the materials. This phase is most delicate as by discovering new interaction changes are made to materials, new ones can be created and old ones can be discarded. This phase also start to define a mediation between what is the vision of the composer and what is realistically possible on location to achieve.

Phase 4 (November 2017) To finalize a chosen dramaturgy by finalizing the materials involved. Once a path has been chosen I proceed by actualizing the materials and interaction, this phase is the most complex in the organization and materials has to be achieved at the highest degree of quality. In this phase I get confronted by my vision and either positively or negatively surprised by the results. Minor adjustments can still be made to the end result.

Phase 5 (10th of December 2017) Presentation This moment framed the presentation of the end result to the audience and to my commissioner. Presentation has to be correctly framed and executed otherwise the final result is irremediably spoiled to the audience.

Artistic/Design Principles From a classical composer prospective acknowledging the equality by music and non musical parameters suggests that a creator can be aware of a deeper and critical categorization of the elements that forms a performance, stimuli with a narrative line and stimuli without a narrative line. I will refer to this two prospectives as “narration” or “time temporal” and “non narration” or “timeless”. To investigate further this duality it is useful to clarify its opposite and yet congruent features. Narration regards every elements that have a beginning and an end, in another words every elements that function with a hierarchical structure of meanings. A clear example is witnessing an event as the appearance of a thunder: first the flash of light, then the sound and then the disappearance of the natural event. Non narration regards every elements that function without a beginning and an end, elements that have an inner interconnected structure of meaning and can be conceived outside a time order, an example are the laws of electrostatics. It is intuitive that these two prospective strife together to portray objects both in their most apparent and in their most hidden manifestation, one point of view complete the other. This categorization derives by our relationship with time, in one hand we constantly perceive time in its apparent form and accordingly we organize stimuli in succession, in the other hand we can manipulate time inside ourselves with thoughts, dreams and memories, free to conceive stimuli without the chain of narrations that is reality. One could wrongly simplify the issue at hand: once we are physically unable to bend time, narration as a natural state regards all external stimuli while non narration regards internally generated stimuli. This synthesis would fail to illuminate what is most interesting about this duality: it is impossible to conceive these two prospective separately. Because of our flexible relation with time, narration and non narration intersect and interact constantly during our life experience and it is highly rare for one to stand alone and to solely portray the world or ourselves. This conception of time is present in T. S. Elliot’s works, as it is well explained by scholar Lillie d’Easum in her thesis “T. S. Eliot use of the philosophy of time in his poetry”: “Eliot's concept of time includes two streams which exist simultaneously, and which intersect at significant moments. These are time temporal, in which man must live his life in the changing phenomenal world, and the timeless, noumenal world which he encounters in these significant moments. He may live in phenomenal time in either of two ways, without hope or purpose, so that he is "time-ridden", or he can live in time teleologically, striving for the under-standing of the design into which he must fit in order to achieve the harmony of the still point at the intersection of time and the timeless. The harmony toward which he is striving in his dialectic struggle in time is complete wholeness of personality and spiritual transcendence.”

Artistic/Design Proposal and Realized work “Studio on La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans” is a video performance that will feature a string ensemble, projections and a dancer. The dancer will comment on the ballet poise of the statue by Degas, she will perform a broken version of ballet movements interloped by long pauses. Her body will be initially covered by a cloth that resemble in texture the statue’s skirt. The ensemble will be performing a musical piece complimenting the theatricality of the Dancer, the musical piece I made has connections to historically established classical signs like the cadenza, the appoggiatura, imitations, progressions and the lament music form but will employ them in a pan diatonic harmony rather than in a diatonic frame disconnecting them therefore to harmony and rhythm. Moreover the piece will initially appear as processed sounds through the use of Luigi Nonoʼs reverberation sequencing almost as the music itself, like the dancer is covered by a shroud obscuring the feature of its counterpoint. The performance will aim to show the dramatical fragility of the subject portrayed by Degas, on stage we will have a young girl completely swallowed by her dress, alone in the darkness of her situation but still breathing, still alive.

Final Conclusions Completing the project made me more aware of the gap I am noticing between my musical knowledge and my visual skills. Despite that I am even more resolute in exploring extra musical parameters as by doing that I noticed a improvement not only in visual skills but in my musical skill as well. Gathering feedback from my peers, teacher and audience I received interesting feedback that can potentially bring this project a step further by for example: - making clearer the transition between night and day of the landscape - making clearer the set up of the performance on video - to perform the piece live.