Viola Enluarada

I recently came upon a life-changing idea and became deeply engrossed in the beauty and depth of the text and music of a song “Viola enluarada” composed by Marcos Valle and his brother Paulo Sérgio Valle.

In Brazil viola refers to the acoustic guitar. Violas are used for serenades, to accompany songs at parties, and other musical occasions. It is part of the soul of Brazil and contributes in unique ways to the musical culture. Viola enluarada was composed in the 60s in the context of Bossa Nova but transcends the genre to become a classic statement of the human spirit. Enluarada has no real English equivalent but means “moonlightened.”

Bathed in moonlight we can see the world differently, intuiting that the challenges of life are not as sharply etched as we might think. Love, music, liberty, life and death embrace us in the breath of a single moment. Listening to this recording brings a rebirth and renaissance as we realize that no matter what we face, the freedom of the human spirit triumphs over all the claims of power and destruction. This has been the experience of the Brazilians, and the rise of Capoeira (martial art, dance, and music) as a response to slavery and brutality, attests to the resiliency of a people who have suffered much adversity and yet remain full of hope, as well as being among the most innately musical beings of our species.

Here is a literal translation of the Portuguese. The texture and resonance of the words are inseparable from the music, and Marcos Valle’s phrasing will astonish you with its subtlety and sensitive stretching of time that lives in counterpoint to a simple but eloquent harmonic commentary.

The version that never fails to bring tears to my eyes is Marcos Valle from Bossa Entre Amigos.…so simple and elegant, his phrasing is impeccable.

a mão que toca o violão

In the hand that plays the guitar

Se for preciso faz a guerra

if needed [(it) notes the war

Mata o mundo, fere a terra

kills the world, hurts the earth

Na voz que canta uma canção

In the voice that sings a song,

Se for preciso canta o hino

if needed, (it) sings the anthem,

Louva à morte

praises death

No sertão é como espada

in the countryside, it’s like a sword,

Viola e noite enluarada

moonlight viola, moonlight night

Esperança de vingança

hope of revenge.

No mesmo pé que dança o samba

In the same foot that dances the samba

Se preciso vai à luta

if needed, (it) goes to fight

Capoeira

Capoeira

Quem tem de noite a companheira

(the one) who lies, at night, his companion (fem.)

Sabe que a paz é passageira

knows that peace is transitory

Prá defendê-la se levanta

To defend her (peace/companion)

E grita: Eu vou!

(it) stands up and shouts: I go (I will)

Mão, violão, canção, espada

Hand, Guitar, Song, Sword

E viola enluarada

and Moonlightened Viola

Pelo campo, e cidade

through the country-side and the city

Porta bandeira, capoeira

Porta bandeira, capoeira

Desfilando vão cantando

in the parade (refers to carnival) they sing

Liberdade

Freedom

Liberdade, liberdade…

Freedom, Freedom

The Intimacy of Rain & Digital Collaboration

Recently I started a web collaboration with a dancer in California and a Dancer in New York, where I created materials to post on the web as a collaborative process. During a Skype conference we decided to explore the theme of intimacy.  Exploring the concept of intimacy took me down a side path, making me aware of rain as a refuge for being alone or with someone you care about, as noted in the song from The Fantasticks, “Soon It’s Gonna Rain”. This led to my creating several movies about rain, such as this one:

RAIN

The music by Gwan Ying Wu provides a lingering moment of intimacy. Her pianism and arrangements are evocative of an intimate awareness, a personal connection that leads us to a safe place.

As I explored this idea, I suddenly thought of Gene Kelly’s “Singing in the Rain,” a testament to intimate exuberance:

GENE KELLY: “Singing in the Rain” (1952)

The energy of Gene Kelly celebrates love in the rain, declaring that all is right with the world when you are in love. Despite its outward enthusiasm, this moment is a personal connection with the world, an intimate touching with an invisible witness that shares the celebration. The rain invites abandonment and we surrender to spontaneity, to the immediacy of the moment.

Kelly is happy-go-lucky and with an air of naivete, a post war enthusiasm of a century poised for new and wonderful achievements. Even Singin’ in the Rain was a technical marvel that brought movie making to new levels.

Half a century later,  the fabulous entertainer Usher treats Kelly’s film as a “score” for his own performance:

USHER: “Singing in the Rain” (2007)

Usher – Singing in the Rain – live @ Movies Rock
Uploaded by geronimos87. – Explore more music videos.

Usher pays careful attention to detail, and he brings a relaxed air to the moment. It is a different energy, comfortable, hip, more into the naturalness of his personality. He is more controlled within the spontaneous, and his expansiveness is embedded in an intimate awareness of style.

Usher’s recreation is not an imitation of Gene Kelly’s work, it is the creation of a new work in the context of a new century and new technology. The set for Usher was not a movie stage, it was a theatre stage. But it is a theatre stage that has the trappings of a television studio. Usher’s set is remarkable in the way it celebrates the original but achieves its own personal identity. The orchestra is re-scored with faithful attention to the original, but with an updated sound.

As a new work, it makes a different statement from the original. Kelly’s work defies the elements and achieves virtuosity through his exuberance and physicality. Usher’s work accepts the elements, and virtuosity is simply an extension of a personality entirely comfortable and at ease with himself. Within Usher’s superb performance there lingers a wistfulness of a past gone by, a recognition of past achievement and a certain regret that we can’t go back to then. But even within that context there is a pensive optimism that all that we have suffered in the past 50 years can open to a new vision of ourselves.

It was likely inevitable that someone would place their work side by side to reveal how well the recreated work matched the original:

KELLY & USHER: Side by Side

Technically, this version uses the original sound source to coordinate the two versions. This pays homage to the original, but also lets us marvel at how faithful Usher remains to the original “score.” We look at 1952 and 2007 side-by-side and observe how the present appropriates and assimilates the past. The problem with this version is that it relegates Usher’s work to that of imitation, while in reality it is a true recreation, a creative act that asserts itself in a new century.

And finally, there emerges a master at editing who transforms the two versions into a work of art:

KELLY & USHER: Together

This version celebrates two eras in a masterful merging of the materials. Each is secure in its own style, and the distinctive qualities of 1952 and 2007 are allowed to mingle in a counterpoint of past and present. Devices of prolongation and extension provide a basis for extraction of materials from each performance and to be merged across time through the technology of film and synthesis. We have a virtual duet between the past and present celebrating an idea that transcends the moment and creates its own world.

The synthesis and integration of the two performances ushers in a new technological basis for collaboration, where through extraction and synthesis new works emerge. We are beginning to see the potential of this creative process, which enables extension of new works through the transformative, collaborative power of digital technology.

SOLILOQUENCE

SOLILOQUENCE

Soliloquence is a work exploring the Meeting of East and West. It is meant to be performed live with this multimedia film projected as part of the performance using dancers and a Gayageum player, although additional performers could be added. It should have an improvisational character that serves as counterpoint to the structure of the film.

Professor Kim Myung-sook has provided videography of her performances and choreography with her Dance company, Nulhui Dance Company of Seoul Korea. Using materials from Nulhui Traditional Korean Dances and Contemporary Creative Dance, John Gilbert has created a movie inspired by the Gayageum performance by Haerina Park of Kae-Ok Kim’s “The Dream of Arang”. The version included here have the Gayageum with the movie and computer score. It was performed as part of Songs of Summer Solstice with live performances of a dancer and Gayageum.

Identity and the Web

The WWW provides a new platform for discovery. It can be discovery of ourselves as artists, as citizens, as thinkers, as poets. We can be whatever we want to be. There is tremendous power in this illusion. But is it illusion? As we mirror ourselves in new identities, a transformation enters into the process as we become what we project. We are what we edit. We are what we process.

At first, the principal content defining us on the Internet was text-based, language intent on informing. Blogging moved informing into the realm of identity and discovery, in creating in the constancy of change. Then content added image, then sound, and finally video. Each of these content areas became an arena for self discovery. This extension of media invited new ways of defining self. Look at this video in which the creator is not a drummer nor a pianist:

The fantasy world created through sound and image exists only as a moment of self expression and inquiry, a discovery that takes the creator to a new place through the process of creation and through the Internet witnesses that somehow stumble upon this vivid imagination. It is not an intellectual act, but rather a visceral, intuitive exploration filled with humor, self-awareness, and a sense of spontaneity. None of this happens in real time, but is achieved through assembling stop action photography with precise timing geared to the music track.

Another sound and image inquiry through the Internet takes on the quality of a musical journal. James Blunt creates a fantasy of himself. It’s appearance on YouTube seems like a confessional and a revelation. The simple unpretentious quality of his singing, his turning around, walking toward toward the viewer (it could be me or you), and removing the hood so he can share this intimacy is a confessional to himself and anyone else who might be passing by. The metaphor is extended through his stripping down, baring himself to the world as he shares his fantasy. He faces the realization of his disappointment that he will never be with someone so beautiful.

It is a brief, poignant moment that takes on the air of sincerity. He reveals his excitement when he switches from an almost impersonal narrative and exclaims directly to his fantasy “You’re beautiful! You’re beautiful! You’re beautiful, it’s true!” We are touched by his wish to share such an intimate moment (which is of course, extremely public). The public nature of this intimacy leads to Kevin Sage’s parody below.

Sage’s parody attempts to fool us by seeming so strikingly like the original, but drawing upon cliches and gay phobia to distort the sincerity and shared intimacy of the original. We know it’s an act, even when imitating the naturalness of Blunt, and this ironic realization is reinforced by his apparent leap off of a building into the bowels of the metropolis instead of the deep blue sea of the original.

Yet another parody emerges: “Bloody Cold” from piderman. Parody is a powerful way of establishing and diverting identity. Now the character is no longer a romantic, unpretentious distant lover. Instead he is everyman, out of character and out of place, trapped in someone else’s fantasy.

Parody becomes a form of public inquiry. This becomes social inquiry and reveals the stereotypes that often populate the narratives of our fantasies. The use of all media to conduct this inquiry now insures and wider dialogue and a richer process.

One cannot leave this sequence of responses without looking at the images created to be just the fantasy without the fantisizer, the famous Angelina Jolie — You’re Beautiful.

Here the narrator is only present as a disembodied figure reflecting on a fantasy, celebrating the stereotype of the American Beauty. The repeated iterations of the song in changing contexts makes the song become a parody of itself. Even though it is the same song, the repetitions with changing context remove the innocence of the earlier “reality.” Illusion dissolves into disillusionment and parody becomes caricature. This does not lessen its importance nor its impact but illustrates how distortion adds to and changes meaning.

Such imitative work and parody requires a deep assimilation of the original far beyond the textual meaning. Gestures, expressions, and props must be assimilated and synthesized at a profound level. In the 16th Century, the “Parody Mass” generated new musical expression by borrowing materials from an earlier work. It has been noted that this term might be better translated as “imitation mass”—but even that term fails to acknowledge that a new work emerges from the ashes of the old.

In these works, artists collaborate with the Internet. The Internet becomes a mirror for reflection and discovery. As the works are published, works generate responses, an emerging collaborative process that accelerates as artists transform old materials into new manifestations. Collaboration invites works to become more public, encouraging extension of ideas and materials. Identity, once a private persona presented to the world, is now an ever-changing public presence.

Summer of Dis/Content

I am gradually returning to the world as hints of Autumn invade the air. I have been in the lingering aftermath of a digital summer invested in collaboration with Korean artists creating new works for a multimedia event. The focus of the collaborative activity was on the process of extending creative range through digital technology. The artists were students from Ewha Woman’s University in Korea: visual artists, dancers, composers, and musicians with a conservatory background and no training in technology.

This was an exhilarating and cataclysmic experience, intensive exposure and exchange, crossing vast differences in cultural sensibility, infused with energy. But it was also a debilitating experience, one that tapped the imagination while sucking out the succulent textures of creative ideas, draining me of a creative force as I gave myself totally to the experience of overseeing the final production. To be sure, it was in a context of highly gifted collaborators as colleagues and students, but I clearly miscalculated the energy I would have to give to the experience, an intensive three-week workshop based on Einstein’s Dreams for a collaborative theme.

The reality of content surrendered to the process of generating materials and ideas. Content was disassembled, distanced, and disintegrated through the digital looking glass. We turned ourselves and our minds inside out. What emerged was much more than the sum of our experiences. Ideas, spun on gossamer, were visual, sensual, sonic confections of kinetic creations, shimmering on the edge of virtual parallel universes. They were delicate, fragile— of the moment.
Coming back to my senses, I understand that something very powerful and important took place in the dis-content of this summer. Creative breakthroughs often erupt in the discomfort of an unfamiliar energy seeking equilibrium. Digital technology has opened up new worlds of creative possibilities and interactions. Now in the debris of the crystallization of these energies I find my self discovering—uncovering new worlds of cross cultural understanding and expression. We are at the beginning of new worlds and new discoveries as we share the joy and pain of creative collaboration.

PLEXUS: An Endless Voyage of Collaboration

PLEXUS is a group of artists who began collaborating in the late 1970s and whose endless artistic voyage continues even now. In 1982, these artists formed PLEXUS, Much of their work was conceptual, evolutionary, and revolutionary, as artists extended themselves into furture renderings of work that was ongoing as dynamic, changing entities.

A historical synopsis can be found on the Internet at Plexus Forum which provides a chronology of events from 1992 to the present time. But the details and the spirit of these dynamic happenings recede into the background, waiting to be restored.

On the website of ISALTA, a recent news release promises to bring these years to life through a new book by Sandro Dernini:

I am pleased to inform you that today, on the 25th anniversary of Plexus (born on June 13 of 1982 in New York), finally I signed a contract with the Academic Press of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” to have published the book Plexus Black Box, A Multicultural Aesthetic Inquiry into an International Community Based Art Project. In the attachment there is the book cover made by Micaela Serino that I really thank for her continuing support in all these years in Rome.
The book will be out at the end of July. It will cost 23 euros and it will be possible to order it directly online from the University of Rome Academic Press.
More info will be posted on http://www.plexusforum.net.
Artlove, the voyage continues…
Plexus23s
Sandro Dernini

This is good news indeed. It is time that the chronicles of this remarkable arts collaborative project spanning more than two decades are brought into perspective.

I am thinking of one such excursion in which the hallowed halls of academia at New York University were literally transformed into an oasis of contemporary artsmaking, unfolding as a dynamic happening, a continuation of a project called The Serpent.

The Scene: November 11, 1988, New York, Bobst Library of New York University. The Snow Room. Il Viaggio del Serpente, second act of The Serpent, performances by Dinu Ghezzo, Sandro Dernini, Miguel Algarin, Arturo Lindsay, Stephen DiLauro, George Chaikin, Lynne Kanter. It featured an Italian art group show by Marina Cappelletto, Antonia Carmi, Franco Ciarlo, Dionigi Cossu, Ivan Dalla Casa, Baldo Diodato, Cosino Di Leo Ricatto, Roberto Fabricciani, Manuela Filiaci, Dinu Ghezzo, Andrea Grassi, Gianfranco Mantegna, Renato Miceli, Beatrice Muzi, Luca Pizzorno, Renzo Ricchi, Elisabetta Zanelli.

Walking into the space was like undergoing a transformation. A parade of the serpent had begun earlier in the Village and ended on the 12th floor of Bobst, much to the bewilderment of security and the library staff. Suddenly a space that is dedicated to the preservation of past achievements was the locus of activity for the creation of new works. Exhibits and artifacts were scattered throughout the space like a garden of new artistic conceptual works unfolding as the evening progressed. Dinu Ghezzo composed a short work. A violinist performed it on the telephone to a location in Italy where a computer processed the music as a parchment of visual art which was immediately FAXED back to the library where it was installed on the library wall. None of this was linear. These were multitextural utterances, overlapping Time and Space, so that the distinctions were blurred and intermingling.

In these pre-WWW days, the spirit of PLEXUS anticipated the new technology and formed the process that would later be replicated almost effortlessly on the Internet. The 12th floor of Bobst momentarily shimmered like a new work of art emerging from the staid confines of the endless stacks on levels below. The evening was one of music, dance, and artworks forming a splendor of artists connected to the moment.

That moment has faded into the past, and The Snow Room has been recaptured by Academia. If their ears and minds were so attuned, those occupying the space now might hear the resonance of the past filtering through… an endless Voyage of Plexus, still crossing new frontiers of imagination, still intent on reconciling cultures.

Music and Internet2: Interactive Multimedia Performance as a New Artistic Medium

Of interest here is music and moving image in the new medium of Internet2, which has become a platform for sharing images and music across distances in a collaborative exchange of live and processed images, video, and sound. Internet2 productions are characterized by images, video and sound that are exchanged in real-time using broadband connections transmitting and receiving multiple channels of video and audio as a multi-site simultaneous performance. Internet2 performances exist as a new medium that has yet to be fully defined and articulated.

Internet2 collaborative performances emerged during 2000 as unique investigations of artistic expression, serving as an opportunity to explore the technical limits of this new medium, while developing aesthetic practices borrowed from features of video concerts and practices, and live television. Many of these early productions focused on music in relationship to the moving image, but were generally functioning on the assumption that the only difference in musical treatment was that these concerts were delivered through Internet2 and that the primary considerations had to do with the technical problems that had to be solved while nothing new had been introduced to challenge the aesthetic premise of such productions. However the aesthetic features of Intenet2 productions suggest that this is a new artistic medium, and the role of music in the context of interactive performances in this new medium has yet to be fully explored and researched.

The most obvious feature of Internet2 performances between distant locations is the latency that occurs because of time lag between the sites, the reception of the sound and image between sites is not instantaneous. It takes time for the signal to be transmitted and received and latency can vary during connections. For sites that intend to incorporate the sounds and images of each other as part of the performance material, ignoring latency or syncing with one site is not satisfactory. Latency is a real-time factor that should be included aesthetically as part of the performance.

Several works were created as a collaboration between University of California Irvine and New York University. including Songs of Sorrow and Songs of Hope, performed in response to the terrorist attack of 9/11 on the World Trade Center. It was during the preparation and performance of this work that Internet2 was perceived by the performers to be an emerging new medium for artistic expression.

Visual and sonic latency adds to the texture of the artistic work and several approaches to structure and performance provide a rich array of possibilities. The Internet2 collaborative process shapes a powerful new medium incorporating moving images and sound in ways that can be understood as essentially different from the inclusion or addition of sound to the moving image of film. Of further interest is to understand how the layering of images, processed and live, changes the perception of the whole and shapes the musical work, especially when the music may be a combination of scored and improvised sounds. Latency furthers the richness of the texture. How does this latency impact on the creative process visually, sonically, and kinesthetically?

ISALTA.com Still a Web 1.0 Site?

ISALTA (International Society for the Advancement of Living Traditions in Art) is an enigma. It is essentially a Moodle Wiki in structure, but appears to be conceived as a Web 1.0 site with interactive participation somewhat limited. Perhaps its origin in the pre-web days in the 1980s is part of the reason. Most of the members are of an era when the emerging web was aimed at web surfers who were essentially consumers. Web authors created information to be read and understood essentially in a text-based context. As images and sound were added, it was largely in a supportive role, controlled by the authors to be consumed by a browsing public.

Visiting ISALTA, I am struck by the lack of participation of its members, but there is no atmosphere for creative input. It resembles a site under tight control rather than a true Wiki where members create knowledge. ISALTA still appears to operate as a site where knowledge is produced by a few to be consumed by its membership and a public that may accidentally Google the site. Although there is a means for commentary, comments are trivialized because they are relegated to the status of comments.

Maybe most of its membership is still stuck in a Web 1.0 mindset. I can’t think of a more appropriate area of concern for a creative, interactive Web 2.0 shared enterprise than living traditions in the arts. ISALTA needs a membership intent on defining and advancing its cause through the creation and sharing of new ideas and knowledge. ISALTA should become a platform for preserving living practices and creating new traditions.

ISALTA seems out of step in its depiction of technology today. On the one hand it regards technology as an enemy, pushing traditions to extinction:

Of special interest to the Society is the recognition and nurturance of artistic traditions at risk of extinction as a result of the impact of technology.

On the other hand, it suggests technology creates future traditions:

What requires examination is not only the processes by which the traditional arts are transformed, co-opted, corrupted and diminished or revitalized and enhanced by the impact of technology, but also the processes by which new traditions are being formed by technology. Photography, film, video, and holography immediately come to mind as examples.

(ISALTA Statement of Purpose)

It seems unfortunate that ISALTA maintains such a visual bias, ignoring one of the major contributions of new technologies in creating collaborative dynamics across all media.

ISALTA has a unique opportunity to restore phenomenology as a central process for arts inquiry and criticism. It could also engage in dialogic process, problematizing issues and creating narrative explorations. But even more importantly it needs to encourage the incorporation of media, of images, sounds, musics, videos, in a burgeoning creative atmosphere, where inquiry is an artsmaking qualitative process. Its members are essentially creators. Perhaps they are not engaged in ISALTA because its perceived stance does not really engage its members.

While it is at it, ISALTA might also change Art to Arts in a sweeping gesture of inclusion.

Sound in Time and Space: Internet2 as a New Medium

Sculpting sound for a particular time and space has been the focus of most of my activities with Internet2. Related to that has been the multimedia environment where boundaries dissolve and images become a substance that resembles music.

The recognition of this new medium with special properties occurred in 2001 during an Internet2 collaboration with the University of California at Irvine and included collaborators at UCI, the European Institute of Design, and John Crawford of EFX. The I2 simultaneous performance was November 21, 2001, and the website documentation is currently archived at artscollaborative.com. One version, including a real media rendering of the Broadcast of that day can be accessed at NYU/UCI 2001 I2 Collaboration.

Internet2 is becoming a new medium for collaboration among musicians, composers, actors, dancers, choreographers, directors, visual artists, sculptors, light designers, videographers, writers, poets, and creative spirits. Aiding in the emergence of this medium are connective technologies such as Skype and VLC which are making Internet interactivity practical and easily accessible.

Problems surrounding our efforts in the past were often stuck in the need for experts to translate and negotiate connectivity. These technicians were largely dependent on expensive vBrick technology, making projects time consuming and technically top-heavy. Web 2.0 has brought a new level of sharing, and with this an new era of collaborative work can go on from artist to artist without necessarily neededing the intervention of a technicial expert.

The medium is here, waiting to be explored. Internet2 no longer represents solely a technical level of connectivity. I2 actually signifies the creative platform and power of collaboration on the the Internet.

Navigating Global Cultures

In the early days of the Internet and the World Wide Web, a group of
artists started using this evolving medium for collaborative projects.
It is my intention to explore the history and artistic processes that
made up these early explorations as well as document experiments and
works that grew out of these collaborations. To some extent, I will
examine the technology of these collaborations, but my main focus is on
the collaborative process, especially as it has developed within the
context of digital technology.

Some of us began with an outreach project that was called Navigating Global Cultures.This project was created in 1992 during the 500th anniversary of Columbus' attempt to connect the worlds of Europe and Asia by navigating across the ocean. Columbus tore open the conscious awareness of Europe by discovering a new world on the other side of his initial probe across the Atlantic. This was the the extension, actually begun by such undertakings as the Roman Empire and the travels of Marco Polo, of connecting the world, which continued with such achievements as the Pony Express, the railroad, the telegraph, and Marconi's monumental breakthrough of the wireless connection of continents in the early part of the 20th Century.

The Internet and the World Wide Web erupted in the latter part of the 20th Century as a wiring of the world, and now we are in the second generation of connectivity where our colleagues and collaborators are located throughout the world, and our association is creating a new platform for understanding and creation of new works, the creation of knowledge, and understanding.