RIXC Art Science Festival 2021
Michelle LEWIS-KING. Qiscapes: Listening to Cosmological Body
Kazuhiro JO, Roy TAMAKI, Takuya ISHIKAWA, Tomoya MATSUURA. Naku: The ‘primary’ of a voice in an anechoic chamber
Silvia ROSANI. AmotIon – emotional content to connect non-musicians to electroacoustic instruments
Petros TATSIOPOULOS. Computed Spatiality and non-Linearity, or the Virtuality of Sound
Michelle LEWIS-KING. Qiscapes: Listening to Cosmological Body
This presentation introduces Qiscapes 氣穴音景 (2019-), a cross-disciplinary research series that investigates complex inter-relationships between embodiment, the performance of medicine and cross-cultural approaches to science and technology. Drawing on my experience as an artist, acupuncturist and digital humanities scholar, I re-stage the Chinese medicine encounter within a digital performance context to create immersive spatial audio environments that form a co-resonant ‘healing’ relationality between peoples’ bodies and their environments. Qiscapes explores the contested existence of qi 氣. To do this, I created an instrument that sonically amplifies the process of acupuncture point location (qi anatomy) as well as the strength or weakness of ‘biosignals’ (or ‘qi’) that travel through each acu-point (qi physiology). The device is adapted from a clinical device into a medical-performance instrument that queries and materialises the existence of an intangible concept-material that many (especially western societies) believe is myth. The performances explore the meridian and point cartographies of human body (and animal bodies) from traditional Chinese medical texts in relation to the acupuncture point location and qi dynamics in real-time within the bodies of performance participants. As a result, each body reveals a bespoke ‘qi’ soundscape that materialises a nonmodern and transcultural vision of the body.
Drawing on experience as an artist, acupuncturist and scholar, Michelle Lewis-King’s research explores cosmological approaches to the embodied performance of medicine and technology in a globalised world. During her performances, Michelle repurposes premodern technologies and methods of the Chinese medicine encounter into contemporary tools that investigate humanist questions. Michelle often works collaboratively – current collaborators include: Atau Tanaka (Professor of Media Computing), Paul Oomen (Director of 4DSOUND) and Pierce Salguero (Professor of Asian History and Religious Studies). Michelle has performed at Ars Electronica, TodaysArt NL, etc., and at the V&A and Anatomy Museum, London, Ex Teresa Art Actual Museum Mexico. Her research is published in the Journal of Sonic Studies, The Acupuncturist, Digital Creativity and ELSE Journal of Artistic Research.
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Kazuhiro JO, Roy TAMAKI, Takuya ISHIKAWA, Tomoya MATSUURA. Naku: The ‘primary’ of a voice in an anechoic chamber
Naku is a performance with a rapper, Tamaki Roy, in an anechoic
chamber. An anechoic chamber is designed to absorb echoes, thus making it an echo-free space.
There is a tale in the space by John Cage.
“… heard two sounds, one high and one low. … (Cage, 1961).”
However, the tale seems doubtful. As Kahn noted, the anechoic chamber was the technological emblem of “Cagean” lore (Kahn, 1997).
To examine the tale, we focused on the ‘primary’ of a voice in
the rapper’s freestyle performance without any amplifications through microphones and speakers and reflections at the space.
Instead of “reading” a text in the performance, he directly extracted
a rap as a series of voices from his thought itself. As a result, we
observed two losses in sound: interference and dynamics. The absence of interference in sound (i.e., echoes) smoothens the rate of a rap that emanates directly from the rapper’s body. The disappearance of dynamics in sound (i.e., reflections) invalidates the need for a loud voice.
These made us aware that the oral creations in freestyle are not done only by the internal body functions of the subject (i.e., the rapper) but also adjusted by conflicts of the space of the performance.
KAZUHIRO, JO
Born in Fukushima in 1977. He is a practitioner with a background in acoustics and interaction design. He has been presenting his practices as works of art at museums and festivals as well as through publishing
papers in international journals and conferences about his projects.
TAMAKI, ROY
Born in Miyagi, Japan Prefecture in 1981. Lives and works in Tokyo. He released six music albums and performed at various music festivals in Japan and foreign countries. Additionally, he has created
performances, installations, film music, advertising music, picture books, etc. He also creates many collaborative works.
Website: https://www.tamakiroy.com/
TAKUYA, ISHIKAWA
Takuya Ishikawa is a practitioner with a background in design research. After working as UI/UX designer, he joined the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS) in 2013 and became an educator at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) in 2016. Since 2020, he has been a full-time lecturer at the Kyoto University of Arts, Department of Information Design. He has been involved in the planning and production of music events, workshop, and cultural policy
research.
TOMOYA, MATSUURA
Tomoya Matsuura (Fukuoka, Japan) is a sound artist who builds systems that describe and generate sound. These take the form of music, sound installations, and instruments.
Website: https://matsuuratomoya.com/
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Silvia ROSANI. AmotIon – emotional content to connect non-musicians to electroacoustic instruments
Audio feedback seems to be very suitable to design and produce hybrid electroacoustic instruments, with which non-musicians could explore sound without the need for any previous knowledge of playing techniques or the western notation. Feedback can in fact result into very simple or extremely complex sounds, thus avoiding tonal references and sparing the sense of inadequateness to non-musicians. In AmotIon, the visitors’ voices are connected to some hybrid electroacoustic instruments through the emotion detection carried out live by a neural network model embedded in an app. The hybrid instruments imitates, contrasts or ignores the emotion detected in the sounds they hear. Their actions are determined by the history of their choices, like live performers would remember the strategies used during an improvisation. The sounds of the instruments are recorded and analysed, like the voices were, and the result of the analysis is compared to the emotional content of the voices. Emotion is a concept which many musicians deny to take into account while composing or performing. AmotIon seems to be able to objectively deal with a way to assess emotion in voices and instrumental sounds as well as the issue of accessibility and inequality in the field of music.’
Silvia Rosani studied composition at Mozarteum Universität after completing a 5-year degree in electronic engineering. She holds a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she has worked as Associate Lecturer. Her research focusses on the disruption of the boundaries between audience and performers through the use of visual elements and technology. Silvia investigates ways to create temporary less hierarchical communities within the performance space. Her music is performed internationally by ensembles such as Neue Vocalsolisten, and soloists such as pianist Anna D’Errico. Her work is performed at festivals such as Venice and Salzburg Biennale, MATA, ECLAT and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Silvia also performs with hybrid electroacoustic instruments she designs and produces. She was Fellow in residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Le Vivier, In Vitro Residency and at the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction in Salzburg (Austria). In autumn 2020 Silvia was in a EASTN-DC residency at the ZKM to develop an installation with the IoTs and, in 2021, at the Center for New Media Culture in Riga (Latvia) through EMAP/EMARE and at the experimental Studio of the SWR in Freiburg (Germany). Silvia currently teaches Composizione Musicale Elettroacustica at the Conservatoire “Nicola Sala” (Benevento, Italy).
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Petros TATSIOPOULOS. Computed Spatiality and non-Linearity, or the Virtuality of Sound
Sound can have various harmonic contents and nonlinear content
seems to be the most sensory non-depriving. Additionally, spatiality
added with the same content immerses nonlinearity in space and sound
becomes immersive in any contemporary medium. As algorithmic composition
dictates an automated musical composition requires no predefined
sequence but only spectra that can form the productive medium of human music. Computer sound can only mediate as much as the input.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/123631503/sNOWFLAKES-vISUAL-RESEARCH-on-partials
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWTAhXT1W_5QgEEBi1eOPvw
https://github.com/AMIMID/co-position
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Petros Tatsiopoulos, born 1993 in Athens, Greece is an Undergraduate student in the Visual Arts
Major department of ACG Deree. He has studied for two years in the Architecture BA department of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and three years in the Scenography and Exhibition Design department of the University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe Germany. During his studies, he has completed one internship in sculpture and one in theater scenography.
Tatsiopoulos is an installation artist, media artist, painter, sound artist, and sculptor. His work is
about dimensionality, non-dimensionality, temporality, the virtuality of sound, and intermediality. Sometimes he works without a concrete medium for the sake of exploration. Apart from studying, Tatsiopoulos has been a sculptor assistant since 2015 and has been a member of the artist group Sushila Maloy stationed in Karlsruhe that created a one-year residency and exhibition space, funded by the group’s activities and the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. In 2016 he designed the spatial environment for the lyric theater play Urban Prayers written by Bjoern Bicker and performed by religious citizens, in the Baden State Theater, Germany, among other scenographic works at that time. In 2015 he took part in the spatial sound art conference and exhibition InSonic, in Karlsruhe, Germany, as a student of HfG.