Towards a poetics of restriction
Jung In Jung
​
PhD in Music and Music Technology
Centre for Research in New Music
University of Huddersfield
jungin.j@gmail.com
2.3.2. Temporal
Video 2.27: Temporal.
In summer 2016 I had an opportunity to curate the dance performance event Shaping Time.Space at the art organisation Flux Factory in New York City. Aparicio and I decided to elaborate the choreographic ideas we had developed through the UnoChair workshop to present at the event. We composed two separate works with related themes, again using two chairs. Aparicio observed how we usually interact with chairs in our everyday life. He found that when sitting in a chair we usually think about either the past or the future, but we are not fully aware of the present. As a consequence, he composed a non-interactive solo dance performance Pres-sitting with the dancer Fumihiro Kikuchi. Inspired by Aparicio’s observation, I thought about the chair as an object in which we have a dream or daydream. And these dream-like images are situated nowhere in the past, the present, or future. They are just temporal thoughts. Based on this idea, I composed Temporal (Video 2.27) and performed with Kikuchi and another dancer Valerie Green. [52]
The idea of composing sound for temporal moments reminded me of a scene from the movie Inception (2010). This is the moment when the main character sitting on a chair dreaming, and the other character pushes him towards a bath filled with water to wake him up (Figure 2.31). While the chair is falling, the main character sees his dream start to fill with water and wakes up. I was fascinated by this scene because in reality the falling time of the chair is almost instant, but the main character experiences it as quite a long process in his dream. I was interested in the structure of the movie as well because I dream almost every day in vivid colour with strange plots. Like the entire plot of the movie, I have also had an experience of dreaming inside of my dream. There was one moment when I woke up from a dream and then I realised that I was still in another dream. In those endless dreams time felt so long, but in reality it was merely less than twenty minutes. Inspired by these images I tried to create a dreamy and surreal choreographic sound composition for Temporal.
Figure 2.31: A waking-up scene in Inception (2010).
I kept my role as someone who could direct and guide during the composition process because the dancers cannot see what they are doing during the improvisation. As Murray Louis and Alwin Nikolais (2005: 65–66) point out in their book The Nikolais/Louis Dance Technique: A Philosophy and Method of Modern Dance; “If he is watching himself in the mirror, he is not improvising the movement fully. He must therefore call on other sensibilities to direct and guide him as he improvises.” Similarly to what Nikolais said in the interview for Day at Night (see here in Section 2.1.2), they write that when guiding an improvisation, “the major obstacle to overcome is the dancer’s ego. ‘That’s what I wanted to do, that’s what I felt,’ dancers will say in defense. […] The teacher must constantly remind the dancers of the premise, if it is not a free improvisation, and if possible make them aware of any opportunities they may have missed” (Louis and Nikolais, 2005: 66). Louis and Nikolais use the word ‘ego’ here, which I understood to mean the dancers’ habitual movements. The primary challenge in my collaboration with my dancers was to find new movement materials by trying out unfamiliar tasks beyond their habits (see also here in Section 2.1.2). My direction did not therefore tell them how to dance, but reminded them when were not properly engaging with the provided choreographic stimuli such as the tethered chairs and sound composition. After every rehearsal, the dancers and I discussed the improvisation we had just finished, and the evaluation was applied to the next takes.
Figure 2.32: Technical set-up for Temporal.
The composition was divided into three parts and I created an automation to fade in and out different parts with the clock in Max (Figure 2.33). [53] I decided to perform Temporal right after Pres-sitting without a break, and directed Kikuchi to wait where he had finished the previous performance until Green walked on the stage. I asked Green to walk onto the stage in pedestrian style and to tether the chairs with the Gametrak controllers. Kikuchi was not allowed to rearrange the cables but was only able to observe Green’s movement. When Green had finished tethering, the two dancers sat on the chairs, and then I faded in the first part of the composition. This opening act was not part of the main composition but a quick solution I suggested to bridge the previous performance and Temporal.
Figure 2.33: Automation created to fade in and out of the three parts of the composition in MAX.
[53] The detailed explanation of loading the Max patch with audio files is in Appendix F.
Video 2.30: The discussion about the transition between the second and third part of composition.
I decided to place two chairs facing each other as I had for UnoChair and tethered three Gametrak controllers to each chair (Figure 2.32). With this condition, the chairs could not be moved completely to the other side of the gallery as the movable distance was restricted. Based on my observation during the UnoChair workshop, this setting of barely reachable distance between the chairs seemed to trigger the dancers to evolve the dramaturgy. I therefore decided to keep the same setting, but elaborate my choreographic tasks and sound composition in greater relation to the possible interactions with the chairs. The most distinctive change in my choreographic tasks between UnoChair and Temporal was that I did not allow dancers to rearrange the cables throughout my choreographic tasks so that the dancers could focus on developing choreography with the tethered chairs. This was because when the performers were free to rearrange the Gametrak controllers during the UnoChair workshop, they became busy attaching and detaching the cables to and from their bodies rather than developing choreography with the restrictive environment or with the sounds they were triggering. However, I did not predetermine any narrative so the dancers could approach the given conditions neutrally. This had proved to be the right balance of control and non-control for my collaborative composition on the basis of my previous experience with Pen-Y-Pass.
[52] I curated three dance performances for the event in total. After Pres-sitting and Temporal, Green presented her choreographed work Impermanent Landscape with her dance company, Valerie Green Dance Entropy. She does not perform as a dancer anymore, but she specially performed my piece for the event. The artworks hanging in the performance space were created by Keren Anavy for Green’s performance. The excerpts for the three performances are available at: https://vimeo.com/186462750. For more information about the event, visit: http://www.fluxfactory.org/projects/shaping-time-space/.
[54] I used the same technique in Pen-Y-Pass. See Video 2.11.
Figure 2.34: The first part of the composition in Max for Temporal.
For the first part of the composition I mapped different sets of notes to be played depending on whether the chairs were moved forwards or backwards (see Video 2.27 from 00:00 to 4:30). I filtered white noise with very narrow bandpass filters with the frequency ranges of certain notes. The three Gametrak controllers tethered to Chair 1 played E4, C5, and A4 when the chair moved forwards and F4, E5, and A4 when it moved backwards. The remaining Gametrak controllers tethered to Chair 2 played D3, E3, and G3 when the chair moved forwards and F3, Bâ™3, and D4 backwards (Figure 2.34).
The choreographic task for the first part was: Be attached closely to the chairs all the time and explore the sound composition by moving slowly with the chairs. It was my intention to let the dancers reveal the harmonic notes by moving the chairs. I wanted to create the feeling that the sound was lingering in the space with subtle changes in movement. When the dancers first tried this part of the composition, they felt extremely restricted because their bodies had to move with the chairs all the time. Video 2.28 (from 00:00 to 02:55) shows the very first rehearsal of the first part of composition. In this take, the dancers were mostly busy finding possible ways to move very closely with the chairs individually, and to discover what happened with the sound composition as they moved the chairs. After the first take, I explained my observations from the first improvisation and directed them to engage each other as well once they had become familiar with moving with the tethered chairs (see Video 2.28 from 02:56 to 07:30). In the second take, the dancers seemed much more confident moving around with the chairs and started developing choreography through thinking about the space between each other as well. For instance, they held the chairs with one hand and leaned forwards to cross each other (see Video 2.28 from 07:31 to 10:27). As a consequence, the dramaturgy seemed evolved with this act.
For the second part of the composition, I mapped the frequency ranges of the bandpass filters for Gametraks 1, 2, 4, and 5 to transition to different frequencies for one minute (see Video 2.27 from 4:30 to 06:40). This slow transition created a surreal feeling with strange discords. [54] When the transition finished, Gametraks 1 and 2 played G4 and E5 when the chair was moved forwards, and F4 and C5 backwards. Gametraks 4 and 5 played G♯3 and E4 when the chair was moved forwards, and F♯3 and C4 backwards. Because the transition was very subtle and slow, I mapped distinctive sounds to be triggered by Gametraks 3 and 6 so that the dancers could notice that the second part of the composition had started. Inspired by the appearance of the classic and domestic wooden chairs I used for the performance, I prepared some creaking and squeaking sounds made by wooden materials and triggered randomly with poly~ objects when the cables of Gametrak 3 and 6 were moved forwards and backwards (Figure 2.35).
Figure 2.35: The poly~ sound players mapped for Gametrak 3 and 6 in Max.
There was another interesting moment during the third take of the improvisation. Kikuchi started pulling the chair towards him and letting it go so that made a sound of hitting the floor. When he heard a creaking sound, he suddenly started dragging the chairs around to make a scratching noise against the floor at fast speed (see Video 2.29 from 01:45 to 04:15). The dragging noise he created naturally added to my sound composition. This movement also created more vibrant energy into the performance as a contrast to the first part of the composition. During the evaluation, I asked Kikuchi to include this movement for the live performance as well. We also all agreed that we found the most interesting interactions between the dancers and the choreographic stimuli I provided during the third take of the improvisation as the dancers became confident enough to move around with the chairs and also responded better to the sound composition (see Video 2.29 from 04:15 to 05:22). At the end of the first rehearsal day, the dancers asked me to share the video recording of the third improvisation take so that they could watch what worked very well before they came in for the next day’s rehearsal. On the second day of rehearsal the dancers tried to recreate the moment when Kikuchi put his feet on Green’s chair (see Video 2.29 from 05:23 to 06:39).
Video 2.28: The first part of the composition process of Temporal.
The choreographic task for the second part was: Move around with the chair freely. You can only rearrange the chairs not the cables of the controllers. In this part, the dancers no longer had to sit or attach their body closely to the chairs all the time, but still had to improvise using the chairs. As soon as the dancers could hear the sound of creaking they started moving around actively; they walked around holding the chairs or lifted the chairs to swing them (see Video 2.29 from 00:00 to 01:00). During the third take of the improvisation, there was a moment when Green crawled and pushed her chair from the back towards Kikuchi. Kikuchi put his chair in front of Green’s chair and sat. And then Kikuchi put his feet on Green’s chair and Green tried to take her chair away while Kikuchi was lingering with his feet (see Video 2.29 from 01:00 to 02:00). This movement worked very well with my sound composition as I wanted to create the feeling of lingering and surreal sustaining notes with the bandpass filters (see Figure 2.34). We decided to keep this movement for the live performance.
Figure 2.36: The third part of the composition in Max for Temporal.
In previous works such as Pen-Y-Pass, I had created sudden transitions between different parts of composition as if changing scenes in a film. But in Temporal, I wanted to create an elusive feeling with the sound composition by blurring the transitions between different parts of the composition. For the transition between the first and the second part, the frequencies for the sustaining notes generated with the bandpass filters changed from one to another gradually (see here in this Section). For the transition between the second and third parts, I automated the sustaining notes from the second part to gradually fade out over 40 seconds. However, the dancers had a hard time noticing when the third part started in particular. I mapped different sounds to each chair and assigned the sounds triggered by chair 1 to speakers 1 and 3, and by chair 2 to speakers 2 and 4 (see Figure 2.32). The initial idea behind assigning the chairs to different speakers was to help the dancers monitor the sounds they were triggering, but this did not work as they moved around the space a lot on all sides. Instead the dancers asked me to prompt them by lifting up a piece of paper when the third section started (see Video 2.30 from 00:00 to 02:33). In the third take of the improvisation, even though I lifted up a piece of paper for them to notice, the dancers missed the transition again. However, I decided not to stop the improvisation because the dancers seemed fully immersed in the improvisation and very focused on listening and responding to the sounds they were triggering (see Video 2.30 from 03:16 to 07:04). In the fourth improvisation, although the dancers did not miss my signal and successfully moved on to the third part of the composition (see Video 2.30 from 07:05 to 10:58), the choreographic task seemed to break the dramaturgy the dancers had developed for the previous parts. Because the choreographic task no longer asked them to improvise with the chairs, I felt it created a sudden disconnection of the relationship between the chairs and the dancers. I suggested getting rid of this choreographic task, but the dancers wanted to keep it as it offered them different physical interactions with the cables. As a compromise, I asked them to continue thinking about moving with the chairs while executing this choreographic task as well (see Video 2.30 from 11:00 to 11:55).
After the composition process, I had an opportunity to discuss my choreographic sound composition method with Kikuchi in depth over email. He explained that keeping a constant awareness of kinaesthetic, auditory, and visual sensations was very important for him in improvisations. Therefore, his primary interest was being aware of the space, the connection with my interactive sound composition, and the relationship with Green rather than trying to build a choreography immediately (F Kikuchi 2018, personal communication, 22 October). He also explained that he sometimes struggled to move within the restrictive conditions of the cables so as not to repeat the same movement over and over, but the interaction with Green and my sound composition helped him to solve that problem (F Kikuchi 2018, personal communication, 29 October).
For the public presentation, as shown in Video 2.27, I encouraged some audience members to sit around the performance space rather than sit only on the chairs arranged outside of the stage. I wanted the audience to feel the physical effort the dancers were creating by moving with the chairs, and also to see more closely how the tethered controllers affected the dancers’ movement. Based on this experience, I decided to create a dance film again, but to try to capture the intimate physical relationship between the dancers and the restrictive elements.
Video 2.29: The composition process of Temporal.
While I was composing the third part of the composition, the image of a sinking boat came into my mind. When a boat (or something as heavy as a boat) is sinking in the water, it takes a while to be completely submerged. For me the process of submerging was like a ‘lingering’ moment from one point to another. Perhaps the creaking sound I had previously used led me to think about this image as well. Based on this idea, I prepared some heavier creaking and squeaking sounds, some metallic creaking sounds, high-pitched eerie sounds, and some rumbles. I mapped Gametraks 1, 2, 4, and 5 to trigger these sounds randomly using poly~ objects when the chairs were moved to various locations (Figure 2.36). The choreographic task for the third part was: Now you can freely rearrange the cables of the controllers and also tether onto your bodies. The dancers tethered some cables onto their bodies one by one and also moved the chairs around in the performance space to find out where the sounds triggered were mapped to (see Video 2.27 from 6:40 to 10:30). While tethered to the cables, the dancers stretched their arms forwards as if creating extended symmetrical lines of the cables. They also tried to reach each other, which created a physical tension between them (see Video 2.30 from 02:34 to 03:14).
For the final part of the composition, I programmed the first part of the composition to be faded in again and the third part of the composition to be faded out. I asked the dancers to detach all the cables from their bodies and reattach them to the chairs once they could hear the harmonic notes from the first part. I then asked them to sit facing each other to finish the performance so that they were recreating the very opening scene.