Gestural Alchemy (2023)

ZEISS Planetarium Berlin

Photo credit: Maria Kyrou

Concept:

The piece explores the relationship between human, cosmos and the divine as experienced through various perspectives from the macro expression of our solar system to the microcosmos of the human body. Drawing from spiritual traditions and philosophies including Sufism and syncretic Baul-Fakir sects who both use sound and movement as portals to the divine, we take our own journey of exploration of these themes in the contemporary planetarium setting. The piece is in 4 parts following the famous Sufi Poet Rumi’s Mathnawi. Unity, Ascension, Annihilation and returning to Unity. This path plots a journey of searching, discovery that ultimately returns home to a sense of connectedness and unity. The Baul teaching says ‘the body is the microcosmos of the universe’. We have seen in recent years this concept being more widely accepted in light of developments in quantum physics and neuroscience. Through exploring human movement, sonifying the planetary rotations and using melody and rhythm to express these relationships we wish to draw this relationship out and facilitate an embodied knowing. The unique planetarium setting will serve as our aid in achieving transcendent experiences in each participant. We hope to facilitate a transformative experience for our live dancer through their embodied interaction with our ritualistic piece, however it is not limited at the dancer. We hope to foster in every audience member, a connection between our macrocosmos experience of the universe, the microcosmos of the universe in our bodies and ultimately to connect with the magical mystery of being alive.

Motivation:

This piece emerged out of a wider interest I have in gesture, and continues along a path of artistic research as well as philosophical inquiry into this topic area. It is not just gesture that I am interested in but the way in which our worlds seem to be born first of this force, this impetus to move. They say in the beginning was the word. I interpret this word to mean sound, but actually, before sound we have vibration and therefore movement is the first thing - force. Gestural creation and expression is pre-linguistic. Though gesture can certainly represent, and there is much to say about gesture and semiotics, I’m rather interested in the pure expressiveness of gesture, something which indigenous cultures honour and document through their art pracrtice. With gesture we find moments when we can witness the transformation of energy into matter. My piece draws from mystical religious traditions such as the Sufi, the Baul and Indigneous Australian cultures where movement and specifically dancing movements take the form of expression and communication not just representation.

Being interested in gesture also implies an interest in space, for the two aspects inform each other. Gesture must occur in space, gesture makes space. Space in many ways defines gesture offering a frame to it. One of my interests in gesture and space, is due to its multi-dimensional qualities. Gesture can slip effortlessly from one dimension to another. For example a musical gesture existing as a thought in the head of a composer, expressed through an instrument into the physical world, heard by a dancer and transformed into physical movement released back into that same space but in a different form.

Coming from a background of electroacoustic composition and commercial mixing, I spend time in strange sound-space dimensions, or multi-dimensions, and the ability through sound to transport the mind to multiple spatial dimensions at once is something that really intrigues me. So much so that I have spent the last three years exploring and resarching it, and although I am having fun with it and this quest is constantly expanding my artistic output and my technical ability, I am no closer to establishing any intellectual understanding. In my most recent theory work, I considered artits such as Bill Viola and the metaphysics of Bergson & Merleau-Ponty. Through this emerged a new concept, the idea of gesture-thought. This brought me to a conclusion that I don’t need to be able to quantify my knowing in words, or through this type of linguistic intelligence. The deeper knowing, the energetic, which for me somehow manifests as gesture is a place that I call on as a store of wisdom and knowing.

The planetarium was an exciting prospect for me because this level if immersion was a great opportunity to explore a different space, a far large frame. I was interested to get a sense for how we could play with cognitive distortions through this overwhelming format. I also am aware from my experience of immersive/multichannel sound formats, how quickly the brain gets used to things, and the awe-inspiring moments in ‘immersion can be all too fleeting'. Thus, I wanted to create a piece which brought the audience into and out of the virtual, so in other words a multi-media performance piece.

Technical:

This project involved quite a lot of moving parts.

  1. Concept Development & Gesture Design

  2. Clothing/Flowing Skirt Design & Making (thanks Mum!)

  3. Video Shooting & 360 video (including lighting design and experiments in general) - shot by Simina Oprescu lighting and direction by me.

  4. Video Editing & Colour Grading (premiere/after effects) by me (THIS WAS A COMPLETELY NEW SKILL NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE!)

  5. Game Design/Programming in Unreal engine (ALSO COMPLETELY NEW WORLD FOR ME!)

  6. Gesture and movement controllers - midi ring, gyroscope, force resistant sensors linking to OSC. For this project I adopted a new approach working with the MiMU Glover application that works as a central hub for processing incoming and outgoing control data from various gestural devices at once.

  7. Object based audio linking with unreal engine - position information sent to SPAT over OSC

  8. DMX Interactive lighting (triggered by gesture devices, linked via OSC in Unreal Engine)

  9. Live Dancer (Choreography done by Lorenzo Savino, with general concept direction and discussion in collaboration with me)

  10. Electroacoustic/EDM musical score

  11. Immersive Audio through ambiX and/or Spat Object Design

Unfortunately due to issues at ZEISS the full realisation of this project was not possible. So instead for the show on December 4 I presented a fixed media piece. This represents a trailer or a taster for the full interactive performance piece that I hope to be able to show in the near future.

Many thanks to Lorenzo & Simina for being with me on this exploration.

The fun has just begun! Lots more to explore.

Jane Arnison Berlin December 2023