Sound and Sight
Featured Dancing in the Sway of the Drops: The Materiality of A Swan Lake View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Martina Cayul
This piece of work, based on my final project in the degree in Aesthetics, is an exercise to analyse dance from the perspective of the new materialisms. I study Alexander Ekman's A Swan Lake ballet (presented at the Oslo Opera House in 2014), aiming to answer the following question: how are the possibilities of movement and script in the ballet reconfigured by the irruption of a lake in the second act of A Swan Lake? I propose that by paying attention to the corporeality of dance itself as a discursive practice, it is possible to appreciate the creation of a kind of language or codes that can be interpreted. Following Barad (2003), a discursive practice is not a synonym for language or what is said, but it is what allows certain things to be said and here it is not just the body of dancers that allows saying, but also the water itself. In other words, the encounter of the materiality of the human, meaning the body of the dancers, and the non-human, namely the water, provoques new ways of moving and therefore forma part of the choreographic composition, co-creating the ballet itself. The above accounts for the agency of the non-human, which Bennet (2010) calls "thing-power" - the ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce dramatic and subtle effects.
Dance Is For Every BODY: Using Dance And Video to Create Inclusivity and Motivation for Those with Parkinson's Disease View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Andrew Carroll
In 2010, University of South Florida Dance Professor Andrew Carroll was approached by The Florida Department of Health to develop a dance video intended as a new vehicle to depict correct procedures of effectively cleaning a hospital room. Carroll, who is a former soloist with The Philadelphia Ballet, was intrigued in ways to use dance in a collaborative and interdisciplinary fashion for the better good of society. To date, Professor Carroll has now produced nine dance videos on behalf of medical or social justice issues including bullying, suicide awareness and human sex-trafficking among others that have been used globally by organizations eager to use the video format to educate and advocate on behalf of their respective issues. The videos were lauded for their ability to capture and engage interest, as well as providing a conduit for discussions of the respective subject matters. Professor Carroll’s interest in bettering society continued when he became certified as a Dance for Parkinson’s teacher, establishing the first Dance for Parkinson’s disease program in Tampa. Due to the overwhelming comments of the Parkinson’s participants in his class in regards to how much dance both benefits their physical well- being as well as creating a community, Carroll came back to his creative research video projects agenda to produce a motivational video documentary as seen through the lens of his Parkinson’s participants. It is now used by Parkinson’s organizations to inspire passion. The paper highlights the creative aspects of these projects and the outcomes which ensued.
Sound Gallery : Creating a Soundscape Digital Exhibition with Middle School Students to Promote Modern Soundwalks View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ricardo Mestre
Conceived by Murray Schafer, in the late 1960s, early 1970s, the soundwalk concept is considered as an empirical method of auditory exploration of the sound environment, in varied locations, also used for the understanding and perception of human daily practices, according to personal and professional points of view (Nakahodo and Quaranta, 2013). Thus, the concept claims for an "active passive" participation of the individual in the sound environment, in order to focus attention and develop the process of critical listening, contributing to the balance of the soundscape (Adams et al, 2008). According to Westerkamp (2001), neglecting the individual and social auditory process promotes a poor quality sound environment, enabling exhaustive, painful and, in a way, depressing and frustrating sound walks (soundwalks). Associated with research in the area of acoustic ecology, the term soundwalking, defined by Hildegard Westerkamp in the 1970s, also highlights the potential of improvisation and composition, through the sound resources available to the listener, articulating the visual component with the auditory one, in a mix of meanings and opportunities within the creation of sound art (Fernström and Taylor, 2014). Within the artistic and education component, soundwalk promotes the creation of sound narratives based on the perspective of the artist and the spectator, translating the environment into a museum available to all listeners, providing the opportunity for those involved to have a dual role of visiting curator, in a work, orchestration and musical performance without direction, without conductor (Kato, n.d.).
Creative Connections and Transfers between Art and Science and Their Social Communication: Seeing, Touching, and Feeling the Invisible View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carmen González
Throughout history, artistic practice has been committed to an attentive observation of everything that affects us as human beings, contributing significantly to the definition of our cultural context. It is not surprising, therefore, that the current location of artistic creation in the university environment and its permanent contact with other fields of knowledge is feeding artists' interest in scientific advances. This confluence has in turn provoked the revision of artistic practice and its methodological keys to adapt it to the framework of knowledge production in other disciplines of a scientific-technical nature. But this convergence also facilitates the possible interactions between art and science, so fruitful throughout the history of art. Our research group at the University of Salamanca ITACA (Research and Transfer in Art and Audiovisual Culture) has developed in the last year innovative teaching projects with art students and professional artists in order to orientate the processes of artistic enquiry towards those activities and developments of the current science. In this communication we present the working method and the results of the creative work of students of the degree in Fine Arts and artists of the University of Salamanca who have carried out laboratory activities with scientists in the field of neuroscience and genetics and have subsequently exhibited the artistic creations based on the scientific concepts learned. This double exhibition has served to present the complete creative processes as well as the final artistic work and to disseminate scientific concepts based on this dialogue between science and art.
Creating Digital Fashion Exhibitions in a New Space View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marcy L. Koontz
Creating exhibitions of fashion has often been associated with a physical space but advances in technology, the developing digital skills of curators, and access to affordable and easy to use apps are challenging this mind set. Fashion collections of historic and contemporary dress can be found on the campuses of higher education across the world. The valuable objects contained in them are beginning to be used in unconventional ways by a variety of disciplines outside the norm for research, teaching, and learning. This paper highlights a digital fashion exhibition created to support a physical exhibition focused on the use of public swimming pools by its citizens and how its local history aligned with national trends and challenged myths about integration. It examines the ways in which objects of fashion, which could not be properly exhibited physically due to space limitations and the inability to control its light, humidity, and temperature levels, could still be included using the digital environment. In addition, it provided an opportunity to include interactive aspects such as video, photographs, lectures, downloadable files, and links for continuous learning.
The Social Role of Voice View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Laetitia Kozlova
Voice is a social object. It bounds humans together, by circulating and shaping social relations. Recordings and sound technology allow audio to travel through places and times. A recorded spoken voice can encounter an audience far from its place of emission. Human interaction with voice is both a cognitive phenomenon and an emotional, vibrational, carnal experience. The former has been mainly studied through the prism of speech perception, while the latter is understudied by scholars. The experience is entangled with the sonorous dimension of voice. We focus on the listener. We experiment with new aesthetics of listening to recorded spoken voice, with a concern for transmission, circulation, and revitalization of our oral heritage. We follow academics’ recent interest in the social and political potentialities of emerging sound-based practices, informed by the sensible and the unseen. We displace voice from its original activity and context, and we perform it in a collective listening session, tuned to the audience. What is at work is a multidirectional, emotional transfer of words and vibrations, in proportion to the sonic sensitivity and commitment of the listener. At collective level, from the common experience seems to emerge an elusive community, focused on the simple but resourceful ability to listen to human expression. This is an attempt to drill new channels of meaning and agency in the apparently trivial action of listening to voice. It opens vivid possibilities for the ongoing digitization of oral corpora. It intensifies and broadens social imaginary in a more inclusive, relational way.
