N44n – Circulating echo of an action as an interactive repetition – in contemporary music, choreography and visual live performance

Monika Karwaszewska1, Beata Oryl1, Michał Garnowski2

1Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk, Poland
2Visual Artist

Abstract

Nowadays, the technologies and elements used in a contemporary live performance such as lightnings, clothes, sensors, computers, loudspeakers arrays, even humans are tools to express art. The performer mission in working live performances with contemporary music and choreography, interactive installations, and digital films is to create artwork that best reflects and engages contemporary society. Interactivity between dance and music allows the artists to pursue new way to show expressivity. Interactive dance places quite different demands on the dancers – is a primarily visual medium. It is essential that artistic work relies mainly on the creativity of the contributors not the methods work, which are just the way to achieve such intermedia art. Technology’s role in live performance is to try to achieve an interactive medium. The subject of studies and analyses will be the electro-acoustic piece contemporary polish composer Jacek Grudzień, which has become the inspiration for an intermedia performance art “N44n” This audio-visual work is the result of the collaboration between the composer, the choreographer, the visual artist and the music theoretician. The live performance art that will be presented at the conference is a synthesis of several actions: performing movement to the music, an interactive visualization of improvised movement inspired by the music and the interactive visualization.

The musical layer will be subjected to choreographic interpretation recorded in video form which, in turn, will provide scope for exploration in the visual environment, whose deformations and transformations affect the moving performance artist, who is at the same time a medium that affects the lighting and visual phenomena happening on stage. As a consequence, created is a picture of coexistent and collaborative bilateral planes, blurring the boundary between the initiator of the action on stage and the role subordinated to the artifact in the making. Each of the assumptions adopted is intended to show the dynamics of the creative process, which through successive choices made by artists in response to the effect of computer activities, as a result creates an interdisciplinary, generative aesthetic work.

Keywords: intermedia, music choreography, live performance

Biography

Monika Karwaszewska, PhD hab., music theoretician. She is a graduate of the Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk with a degree in Music Theory. Since 2006 she has been working at her alma mater in the position of an assistant professor. She is the editor-inchief of the Academy’s Publishing House. In 2013 she was granted the doctoral degree in musical arts (a supervised research project of the Minister of Research and Higher Education funded by the National Research Centre) at the Academy of Music in Krakow. She is a member of the Musicologists’ Section of the Polish Composers’ Union and the author of the monograph Andrzej Dobrowolski. The Music of Pure Form. Her scientific interest focuses on the theory of music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, accounting for intermedial and intertextual methodologies. Decorated with the Bronze Cross of Merit by the President of the Republic of Poland for services to Polish culture.

Beata Oryl A graduate of the Academy of Music. Stanisław Moniuszko in Gdańsk, specializing in Rhythmics. Currently employed at her alma mater as a research and teaching worker at the Department of Piano Rhythmics and Improvisation at the Faculty of Choral Conducting, Church Music, Artistic Education, Rhythmics and Jazz. For many years she has been an employee of the General Ballet School of Janina Jarzynówny-Sobczak in Gdańsk, where she conducts classes in rhythmics and music. She has repeatedly participated in various forms of professional development, taking active and passive participation in numerous workshops, seminars, conferences, scientific sessions and rhythmic congresses organized in the country and abroad. In her activities, she focuses on the relationship between music and movement, looking for various forms of artistic expression, using elements of contemporary dance techniques, individual movement expression, and body self-awareness influencing the expressiveness of the created creations. Her achievements include original works on stage movement, choreography for performances, operas and concerts.

Michał “Gary” Garnowski – Masters of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk at the Faculty of Painting , who previously studied also Architecture and Urban Planning at Gdańsk University of Technology. He is a visual artist particularly interested in video- and filmmaking, including animation and motion design. Although he has participated in exhibitions organized by many of the most important galleries in Gdańsk, such as: National Museum in Gdańsk, Centre for Contemporary Art Łaźnia, City Culture Institute or Gdańsk City Gallery, his main artistic avtivity is 3d mapping creation and video live performing for concerts as a VJ. He has performed at stages of many festivals, e.g.: Open’er Festival, Vilnius Mama Jazz Festival, Jazz nad Odrą Festival or Soundrive Festival. Owing to his broad interests, he explores various fields of video art, starting from plain motion design, through found footage remix editing, ending with generative 3d abstract animations.