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.

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.

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.