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Artists' pages/documenting practice

A journey towards the development of a sound-led interdisciplinary performance: Agorá

Pages 82-99 | Published online: 07 Jan 2015
 

Abstract

Many live performance practitioners have explored the development of live gestural controllers in the hope of achieving natural and intimate interaction with their instrument. While the relevant literature offers a great deal of techniques for the development of mapping strategies that link physical gestures to sounds, resources and discussions on how these techniques have been used for the practical development of a live performance are, in comparison, less dense. The advantage of providing a detailed documentation that offers a clear picture as to how and why these strategies have been implemented in the context of a live performance would ultimately provide an additional and necessary tool for the proper analysis of the performance itself. This article presents, analyses and discusses the journey to the development of Agorá, a live sound theatre performance written for a custom-built data glove named ‘Pointing-at’. The analysis of both the theoretical and practical elements of performance formed the basis for the development of an approach to the design of nuanced gestural performative actions that are both visually and sonically understandable by audience members. In that regard, the use of metaphors that are coherent to the theme of the performance have been found to be a useful tool that can enhance both the performer and audience experience of the live performance.

Notes on contributor

Dr Giuseppe Torre is a performer, multimedia artist, software engineer, researcher and educator. His work, which includes live electronic performances, audiovisual compositions and multimedia installations, has been performed throughout Europe, the USA, South America and Australia. Giuseppe is currently a lecturer at the University of Limerick where he teaches coding for creative application and performance arts. His research interests focus on the development of live audiovisual performance and public installation and include the use of newly developed digital technologies and software. As an artist and technologist, he is also interested in the use of new technologies for the development of multimedia artworks that open debates on contemporary socio-economic and political issues and current art practices.

Notes

1. In this article, I use the term ‘sound theatre’ in the same manner as used by Caroline Wilkins (Citation2013), which describes a genre that lies in between electro-acoustic music and music theatre.

2. Please refer to Torre (Citation2013b, 40–54).

3. The way the hand on which the sensor is placed is oriented with respect to the physical space.

4. Corpus-based concatenative synthesis makes use of several short sound snippets to generate sounds. The snippets are retrieved from the analysis of a large sound library.

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