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Entries in dance (6)

Tuesday
May052015

Inside There Falls

Mira Calix is a composer, sound designer and audio sculptor, who originally established herself releasing music on Warp Records. Since some time, she’s been incorporating her classical orchestral music into her installation pieces an theatre and opera performances.

Her latest piece, Inside There Falls, is a multi-sensory installation consisting on paper, sound, music and movement. This way, she wants us to think about storytelling and it’s essence, no matter the medium. She’s created a shimmering white environment, both physical and sonic, for the audience to explore and to experience (as you can see in the documentation from 02:30 on). The landscape seamlessly blends technology and organic materials. Comprised of over a kilometre of colossal paper sheets, a salt covered floor, a sizeable sphere of decaying paper suspended above a giant bowl of cinnamon powder, bespoke sound composition and ethereal dancers weaving amongst the multi-layered space. The blend of materials is of the essence for Calix, as the processed paper acts as a speaker, the dance is an intervention, and the light is instrumental. The story is what matters.

I love seeing multidisciplinary pieces like this, although they might be hard to wrap your head around when you’re not physically there and can only experience it by video.

Monday
Jan262015

Five Sound Questions to Jeff Mills

Jeff Mills is largely regarded as an innovative techno DJ or producer. More recently, he’s been adopting his ideas, concepts, stories and esthetics from the outset. Since 2000, he’s been pushing further than his DJ fame. Started with creating a soundtrack for Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”, his interest in the future and science-fiction grew, and over the years he has made various sf-inspired works.

For example, a more recent work is “Man of Tomorrow”. Featuring Mills’ poetic sounds and Caux’s invasive cinematic imagery, it is a portrait of Mills portraying his immense perception of the future. Other examples include him imagining a series of strange avant-garde objects questioning our relationship with the world, space and time.

Jeff Mills, Tomorrow + X, 2013 (c) Axis Records / 10 unique white records produced by Jeff Mills, iron spots and hands.
Beginning 2015, Mills exhibits his new work The Visitor, a “UFO inspired machine”, whose language system would be a complete reinterpretation and restructuration of the TR-909 drum machine. Something we might feature later here on Everyday Listening. For now, we’ve asked him to answer the Five Sound Questions, and we’re honored to have him on the site!

1. What sound from your childhood made the most impression on you?

The sound of the ice cream truck that used to come through all Detroit neighborhoods. One sound of the iconic music the driver would play out of his loudspeaker would send any kid into a frenzy. The trick would be to run home, asked your parents for money, then catch up and stop the truck. It was almost like capturing a White Unicorn Horse. Every kid was conditioned to react immediately to the sound of the truck music.

2. How do you listen to the world around you?

In various ways. Because I only speak English, I’ve leaned to read body, hand and eye movements very well, so I may not know exactly what is being said, but I can detect the sentiment. As a career DJ, it’s taught me to listen to multiple things at the same time. Consuming more reality than the average person. It’s made me much more attentive to everything around me. A drawback is that sometimes, my focused attention can be taken away too easily because I’m quite sensitive.

3. Which place in the world do you favor for its sound?

New York City. The city never sleeps. It’s like an alarm clock they never shuts off. Crazy, but I love it. 

4. How could we make sound improve our lives?

I think we can improve our lives with sound by trying to achieve true  silence first. Then by strategically applying sound would make us more appreciative for the sounds that are more relevant. Like a baby crying or laughing, people having a conversation, nature, the sounds of life in general.

5. What sound would you like to wake up to?

The sound of the ocean. 

 

Thanks Jeff! See answers by other artists in the Five Sound Questions section.

Monday
May272013

Trinity

An audiovisual interactive dance piece from Electronic Perfomers. We’ve seen some of their work before, and Trinity explores the sonification and visualization of movement further, in a refined, beautiful way. 

What I love most about this is the way dance, sound and visuals come together and interact, with the dancer’s body as leading force. And while we know a lot of technology is needed to accomplish this, the result is clean, alive and organic, as you can see in this short video of the piece: 

Wednesday
Oct272010

Cinématique

I don’t often post projects that are not directly sound related, but today I have to. Cinématique by Adrien Mondot is an impressive dance performance! Normally I feel like a video of a dance piece really does not capture the atmosphere of it in a good way, but Cinématique is so visually appealing, it is great just watching the video, and doing so makes you want to see the whole performance.

The video is used in a clever, effective way, and you can only imagine how sound could be used to add another dimension to the experience. 

Tuesday
May252010

Oscillare; An Interactive Dawn

Almost a year ago I posted a work-in-progress video of Oscillare as it was presented at last years Sonar festival. Oscar Sol from Electronic Performers, the creators of this project was so kind to send me an update about the completion of the project and as we can see in the video, it has become an impressive piece of work. 

Oscillare; An Interactive Dawn is an interactive multimedia dance performance. Four accelerometers, a gyroscope and a wireless video camera capture the movements of the dancer, which are used to generate and influence the sound and images on the screen. 

Click to read more ...

Thursday
Jun182009

Oscillare: Movement controls the sound

Creating an interesting experience using sensors to control image and sound in a performance isn’t the easiest thing to do. You don’t want it to look like Mickey Mouse, and you still want the interaction between the performer and the sound/visuals to be clearly visible.

Oscillare, a project by a group called Electronic Performers is an interesting attempt to use a dancers’ movement to control sound and visuals without becoming too cheesy. The movements are analysed using accelerometers and gyroscopes, and Max/MSP/Jitter software is used to process the incoming data. The sounds we hear come from an Access Virus TI synthesizer. 

You can see this interactive multimedia performance at the Sonar festival, which starts today.