Project methodology

Theoretical framework

In this artistic research project we explore how to notate, communicate and compose space phenomena across audio-corporeal artistic practices. We investigate these in four disciplines: dance, rhythmics, choir conducting and direct sound. They share an awareness for and a certain tacit knowledge about space. In stark contrast to musical or movement notations, one finds that notated spaces are rather scarce in the audio-corporeal practices even though space unites them. We argue that this lacuna will be brigded by working on an atlas of space qualities. Rather than communicating merely the metric measures of spaces without the performer, we are concerned instead with emergent spatial qualities of smooth spaces that complement the performer, that exist outside of but not without the performer.

Hypotheses / research questions / objectives

We will compare and contrast each of the four disciplines with one another to investigate how to intensify spatial phenomena, how to translate and communicate them, how to appropriate them for ones own practice and how to engage into mutual composition. We inquire about the kinetic spheres of two performers when a third one enters. Similar to the three-body problem in physics we seek to describe this emergent phenomena. How can the complexified spatial interactions of the kinespheres be notated. How saturated becomes the space, how fragmented, how synchronous?

Approach / methods

We conduct experiments during which a smooth space phenomenon is first distilled and condensed to a clear spatial expression. This we call the null-space. It is the starting point for our investigations and experiments, which are co-created in an iterative process by the performers and a complexity scientist. We foresee a recursive pipeline, that divides the work into individual, collision and co-production modi. We also foresee a role fluidity - performer, experimenter and documenter are not attached to individuals allowing for a change of perspective.

Level of innovation

Acknowledging the importance of spaces in the audio-corporeal arts we consider the development of transdisciplinary space practices and notations as our major innovation. Secondly we believe that the particular mode of collaboration between performers and a complexity scientist leads into new artistic methodologies. Thirdly we create a toolbox that refers to the intense qualities of audio-corporeal space articulations and enlargens the disciplinary range of compositional space factors for artistic productivity.