Arne Eigenfeldt: Moments: Time and Space
SCA Faculty Research Series
September 6 – 8, 2018 | 7:30 p.m. & 8:30 p.m.
Studio T – SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
149 W. Hastings, Vancouver V6B 1H4
Free event. Limited to 25 people per performance. First come first seated.
Moments: Time and Space is an immersive audio-visual work for two dancers and generative audio/video system, bringing a virtual/augmented reality performance to a small audience. The dancers move in a performance space in which generated video is projected on three walls, their movements tracked by sensors so that their positions will influence the procedurally generated audio and video.
The work is a continuation of Arne Eigenfeldt's research into generative art systems that use the interaction of intelligent agents (musebots) to create the artwork itself. Moments are a series of generative works that explore Moment-form, a term coined to describe music that avoids directed narrative curves, and instead exists within stasis. One musebot generates an overall structure, suggesting a top-down compositional hierarchy, while additional musebots negotiate to interpret this structure through self-organisation, suggesting a bottom-up improvisational hierarchy. Each ten-minute machine composition and performance is original, unique, and mercurial - never to be heard again.
The visual component of Moments: Time and Space was created in collaboration with Vancouver artist Simon Lysander Overstall. A visual musebot interprets the messages produced by the other musebots, with visual musebots traveling through the generated environment, visualising the audio musebots actions, while being attracted or repelled by the live dancer's movements.
Dancers Rob Kitsos and Yves Candeau are expert movement improvisers with an established relationship. In Moments: Time and Space, they will be challenged with moving to music and visuals that are generated on the spot.
Bios
Arne Eigenfeldt is a composer of live electroacoustic music, and a researcher into intelligent generative music systems. His music has been performed around the world, and his collaborations range from Persian Tar masters to contemporary dance companies to musical robots. Authoring over 50 peer-reviewed publications, his research has been presented at international conferences of computer music, digital art, and computational creativity. A professor of music and technology at Simon Fraser University, he has taught there since 1994.
Simon Lysander Overstall is a computational media artist, and musician/composer from Vancouver, Canada. He develops works with generative, interactive, or performative elements. He is particularly interested in computational creativity in music, physics-based sound synthesis and performance in virtual environments, and biologically and ecologically inspired art and music systems. He has produced custom performance systems and interactive art installations that have been shown in Canada, the US, Europe, and China. He has also composed sound designs and music for dance, theatre, and installations. He has an MA in Sound in New Media at Aalto University in Helsinki, a BFA in Music Composition from the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, and an Associate in Music (Jazz) Diploma from Vancouver Island University.
Rob Kitsos is an acclaimed dancer, dance instructor, performing artist and choreographer who appeared with dance companies across the United States, Asia and Europe. He has performed at international festivals in Lisbon, Barcelona, Paris, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Venezuela and Hong Kong. In addition to his own work as an independent choreographer and performer, Rob has been a member of over fifteen performing companies and artists covering a broad range of styles from mime to hip hop to ballet.
Yves Candau is a dance artist whose main practices are dance and improvisation. He has gradually been drawn to other media in pursuit of similar fascinations: emergent forms, both in natural and artificial systems; the interplay between complexity and simplexity; and the dynamics of transformation through practice.
Co-presented by SFU Woodward's Cultural Programs and SFU School for the Contemporary Arts.
