EURHYTHMICS NULLSPACE

How is space being created through the lense of a musical score?

What is in the centre of a eurhythmician’s artistic routine? How is music being expressed as movement in space? Which space concepts are underlying in the music-choreographic formats (see “L’ interpretation corporelle”, Le Rythme 2017) existing in the realm of eurythmics (historically, contemporarily)? How does a eurhythmician apply his/her identities as an instrumentalist/ vocalist in a spatial setting and which kind of audio-corporeal expressions are generated by their body archive as mover-instrumentalists?

Concentrating on intermedial relations between music and movement (see the online exhibition on the topics of relatedness of music and movement and concepts of rhythm by Dorothea Weise 2023), Eurhythmics aims at developing the skills and abilities to connect an inner listening to an outer movement and vice versa: an inner movement to a sound or musical gesture. The interface where movement and music meet is the space, which allows a body to expand, a sound to resonate and to create a particular kinaesthetic awareness (Schroedter 2023, 15.5.). Among the senses kinaesthesia (Sieben 2003), as a proprioceptive system, links the body with space and becomes essential in smooth spaces research. Kinaesthesia not only tracks posture, movement or position of our own body in space but also gives feedback on our movement dynamics, muscle tone, textures of the body systems etc. as intensive qualities of movement. Connecting this idea of kinaesthetic awareness, which becomes a necessary factor for orientation in smooth spaces, how can the act of listening to music or sound (Calissendorf/ Jaresand 2013), the multi-dimensional interactions between listening and moving can become a smooth space research? 

EURHYTHMICS study cases:

\ Fractal Lab

Space explorations using the self-playing piano CEUS by Bösendorfer. Learn More

\ Description Lab

Dialectic Attempts of A Eurhythmician And A Complexity Scientist. Learn more

\ Movement Choir Lab

Study of different choral scores that contain movement or scenic elements. Learn more


Here is some of the output originated in this Nullspace:

Révélations @ Kunstzentrum Wachsfabrik
Mit Pauken und Paläste
Schweizer Rhythmik-Fachzeitschrift: «See my logic»
Tallis in Wonderland @ Atelierhaus (Akad. Bildende Künste)
Symbiotic Spaces: dialogues between a pianist and a self-playing piano
Dialectic Attempts in Artistic Eurhythmics Practice - Towards a notation of spatial qualities through an iterative multi-layered description
Six memos for a pianist and a self-playing piano - an artistic investigation of spatial phenomena with the self-playing piano system CEUS by Bösendorfer
These.Things.Again
Eurhythmics – Movements between composition, notation and sonic realisation
/spɜm/ @ Linz
Article for "Handbook Music and Motion"
Video presentation „Six Memos for a pianist and a self-playing piano” @ MDW
Workshops and lecture „Etudes d'espace – dialectic attempts of a Eurhythmician and a complexity scientist“
Article in "Le Rythme": Dialectic Attempts of A Eurhythmician And A Complexity Scientist
Null space experiment: double pendulum and a score by György Kúrtag
Sacrum @ Semperdepot
Conducting Spaces @ Ars Electronica

References

Artacho Bueno, Adrián/ Horstmeyer, Leonhard/ Kupferblum, Markus/ Pilgrim, Hanne (2023, in process of publication): Six memos for a pianist and a self-playing piano – sketches on an artistic investigation of spatial phenomena, in (ed.) Kim/ Schacher/ Schroedter: Handbook Music and Motion, mdw press.

Calissendorf, Maria/ Jaresand, Susanne (2013): A physical interpretation of a score in a listening attitude, Leuven University Press.

Dutkiewicz, Barbara (2023): Plastique animée – embodied music moving in space.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7789399

Horstmeyer, Leonhard/ Pilgrim, Hanne (2023): Dialectic Attempts in Artistic Eurhythmics Practice – Towards a notation of spatial qualities through an iterative multi-layered description, Le Rythme 2023.

Pilgrim, Hanne (2022): Fokus als fundamentale Kraft in musikbezogenen Bewegungshandlungen, Fachzeitschrift Rhythmik Schweiz Nr. 41.

Sieben, Irene (2003): Ohne Bewegung gibt es keine Wahrnehmung – warum der Tanz am
Anfang aller Künste steht
, Ballettanz, August/ September 2003, S.28.

Schroedter, Stephanie (2023, 15.05.): The Mind is a Muscle – or: the Muscle is a Mind?https://doi.org/10.25624/kuenste-1950

Weise, Dorothea (2023): Relatedness of music and movement. Intellectual Output in the Erasmus+ Project Eurhythmics in Education and Artistic Practice. https://www.kmh.se/in-english/atlas-of-eurhythmics/results-from-the-project/verbs-a-glossary/relatedness-of-music-and-movement.html and https://www.atlaz.space/atlas/2Z49CWb3bEZgpZ8JE/item/fS5eKQwNa7GdD6aMf


Eurhythmics Representatives

👤 Hanne Pilgrim
👤 Stephanie Schroedter
👤 Magdalena Eidenhammer

DANCE NULLSPACE

In practice any clear and unpolluted configuration can function as a departure point. In mathematics, these departure points are called null-models and we may call the departure expressive spaces null-spaces

Returning to the intensive qualities of expressive space, we recall the mantra attributed to Aristotle: The whole is more than the sum of its parts. These mores are precisely those that cannot be explained by simple extrapolation from the parts via a reductionist approach. Those mores are the emergent phenomena. Those qualitative mores are what we attempt to surgically extract and harvest. 

NULLSPACE DANCE study cases:

\ Dance Groups

Study Materials by Rose Breuss including Jean Paul Sartres theory about practical freedom in groups. Learn More

\ Dancing Motoricity

Dancing Motoricity of Dorothee Günther´s Illustrations. Learn more

\ Dore Hoyer Project

Dance as an artistic practice is a multilayered phenomenon. In Cooperation with FAR – Fashion and Robotics. Learn more


Here is some of the output originated in this Nullspace:

Spherical dances
Mit Pauken und Paläste
Vorstellung des PEEK-Projekts „Atlas of Smooth Spaces“ @ Forschungsforum
Tallis in Wonderland @ Atelierhaus (Akad. Bildende Künste)
SCORES | Zwischen Dokumentation, Vermittlung und Kreation
„Dance Groups: Study Materials by Rose Breuss including Jean Paul Sartre´s theory about practical freedom in groups“
Dancing Motoricity of Dorothee Günther´s Illustrations: GYMNASTISCHE GRUNDÜBUNGEN, NACH SYSTEM MENSENDIECK
Dore Hoyer Project
„NOW, as I was about to….“ @ Brückenfestival
/spɜm/ @ Linz
5 Pieces - Dance Cie. Off Verticality @ Brick5
Rosenberg Dance Research Festival
Conference on Dance Research
Dance and Theory – Challenges and Tendencies in Teaching Theory in Dance Education. International conference Bratislava
Desire Machine @ Schmiede Hallein
ChoreographiaInterAustriaca and Altenberg Trio @ Minoritenkirche

Dance Representatives

👤 Rose Breuss
👤 Maria Shurkhal
👤 Damián Federico Cortés Alberti
👤 Marcela López Morales
👤 Kai Chun Chuang

CHOIR CONDUCTING NULLSPACE

The duality between space and performers is at the heart of this audio-corporeal art. Space becomes the principal mediator of consonance, dissonance and resonance, of reflection and refraction, of emittance and transmittance, of harmony and disharmony, but also of suggesting and accepting, of guiding and following and of conducting and receiving. The space leverages this mediation and becomes saturated by it.

Then the question arises, who is conducting and who is conducted? Who or what is the instrument and what the instrumentation? A choir with all members being placed in isolated cubicles is not quite a choir. As few as two singers can elevate each other into a choir in cooperation with the ambient space. When tapping into the powers of space, singers can reinforce themselves into a homogeneous, space-pervading and elevating phenomenon. Is the reinforcing space then an instrument or a collaborator? Is the reinforcing and transmitting space the active and conducting source? 

CHOIR CONDUCTING study cases:

\ Lux Aeterna

Studies of space from Ligeti’s choir score. Learn More

\ Mapping gestures

Conducting gestures to control audio in real time. Learn more

\ Audience participation

Participative approaches to choir polyphony. Learn more


Here is some of the output originated in this Nullspace:

Tallis in Wonderland @ Atelierhaus (Akad. Bildende Künste)
Mut, jede Stimme zählt @ Volkstheater
Sacrum @ Semperdepot
Conducting Spaces @ Ars Electronica

Choir Conducting Representatives

👤 Johannes Hiemetsberger
👤 Sara Glanzer

DIRECT SOUND NULLSPACE

Every space has a unique sound spectrum associated to it. Just as an instrument has a range, a space of possibilities and of timbre, so does space itself. It is impossible to get a metallic sound out of a wooden instrument and vice versa. What eventually creates the character of sound in an instrument is of course the space, namely the resonance body. So, it is not surprising that each space has its very own character and timbre. Technically the relation between the space and its range of possibilities, its character so to say, is defined by the Fourier transform. The Fourier transform of a space yields all the possible frequencies that one may tap into during a spatial interaction. 

‘Fishing’ practice during a Boom-Lab session at the Filmakademie Wien

Capturing the character of the sound it requires fishing. This is the art of Direct Sound. Fishing for sounds means to tapping into the spatial character. Technically it involves channelling frequencies that are present in space through a recording device, the Boom. In this research project we consider the fishing itself as a performative interaction with space in which both the acoustic free field (direct sound) and the acoustic diffuse fields are accessed through the Boom. Fishing for sounds is then the art of capturing the characters of both the localised and active direct sound vis-a-vis the de-localised and passive, diffuse sound. 

We ask: How to fish for spatial qualities and sound characters? How can we read and interpret the diffuse field? Just like an encrypted memory it contains the archive of sounds in the space and as such we view it as a distilled source of spatial knowledge. Much like a conducting baton, the boom as an instrument has a special role as it translates the space into a signal, and this instrument requires a grammar, a syntax and a notation: A linguistics of the boom. 

DIRECT SOUND study cases:

\ Boom choreography

Artistic experiments in boom movement in collision with other disciplines. Learn More

\ Boom as choreomusical practice

Space experimentations with the boom. Learn more


Here is some of the output originated in this Nullspace:

Révélations @ Kunstzentrum Wachsfabrik
Tallis in Wonderland @ Atelierhaus (Akad. Bildende Künste)
Boom notation workshop
Kick-off Workshop

Direct Sound Representative

👤 William Edouard Franck