mikro performance

mikro performance, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

Mikro is a series of improvised performances using the immediate surroundings as raw material: A microscope captures everyday objects and surfaces like wallpaper, coins, clothing, furniture, newspapers and transforms it into an explosive universe of textures. Contact microphones and electromagnetic sniffers pick up unhearable sounds to create the live soundtrack.
Mikro is a collaboration between HC Gilje (video) and Justin Bennett (sound).
Performances so far:
Paradiso (Amsterdam), IMAL (Brussels), TAG (den Haag), DNK (Amsterdam), Bergen Kunsthall Landmark (Bergen), Laznia (Gdansk)

one year, two to go

multimorf_screengrab1, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

It´s now a year ago since I started with my research fellow project “Conversations with spaces”. It´s been a busy year, and the last few months I have not been able to follow up the blog very much unfortunately, mostly due to my work with the two soundpockets projects I did as part of Urban Interface Oslo (which runs until oct 7th). I will come back to this project in a later entry.
I made a small trip to Ars Electronica, and had a nice talk with Julien Maire and Pablo Valbuena, and I might write a little bit about their projects later.

The image for this entry is from a performance I did yesterday, making a visual landscape for a concert written by Knut Vaage. I used the textures of the instruments, mainly brass instruments, as my source material, and had my first go at programming opengl shaders for the live processing.

I am doing a small tour this week together with Justin Bennett with our Mikro project, live sampling of our surroundings using microscope and EM sniffers ++. We play in Brussels on thursday october 4th, Den Haag sunday the 7th and in Amsterdam on the 8th.
I will also be part of a group show in Brussels, which is the opening of the new space of IMAL. I will show the three-channel version of nodio there.

exit kreutzerkompani

kreutzer, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

Today is the official end of Kreutzerkompani, the collaboration between choregrapher Eva-Cecilie Richardsen and myself, after almost 10 years together resulting in performances like Irre, Synk, Elevator and Krets.
For some nostalgia you could take a look at the documentation from some of the productions I have been involved with. (the links at the bottom of the page)
I wish Eva Cecilie good luck with new projects!

the loud objects

Marius Watz made a nice video documentation of the loud objects performance he attended at monkeytown.

It is a live physical computing concert, where they hook up different sound components on a overhead projector making it interesting also visually.

Julien Maire

image from the Tesla website

I received an email from Tesla that Julien Maire is showing work there this week (exploding camera, may 22nd-may26th), wish I could go. I have had the chance to see his performances with mechanisms in slide-form, Dia-positive and demi-pas at Transmediale, which were great.
The work which really caught my attention though is a old performance he showed a documentation from at a presentation of his work, ordonner: a slow motion performance, described as “The gradual slowing down of the movement of the boxes during a house move”. See a short video from the performance here.

The queen is the supreme power

The queen is the supreme power 2, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

(Slideshow from the rehearsals here)

My latest collaboration with Yannis Kyriakides is a piece based on old telegraph code books. I use scanned pages combined with microscope texture from these books and project onto the orchestra from two sides, using the musicians as screens in combination with a wide screen behind, trying to create a dynamic space using text fragments and letters as projected light.

It is a coproduction between ZKM in Karlsruhe and Musikfabrik in Cologne, and is performed may 17th in Cologne and on the 18th at ZKM.

Synk at Dansstationen in Malmö

Synk, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

On Friday May 4th, I perform the piece Synk with Kreutzerkompani and Justin Bennett on sound. Synk was originally made in 2002 for the Ultima festival, but has been played quite a few times the last five years.

The idea of Synk was that no prerecorded video or audio would be used, only material sampled during the performance was allowed, to investigate live as raw material : to impose a structure on a live situation to allow for unpredictable results within that frame structure.

It creates a dialogue between the physical space on stage and the mediated space from the screen and speakers, and the relation between the memory and the present of a space.

More info on Kreutzerkompani and Justin Bennett

More images from Synk (click on the small images)

 

The lamentation of Orpheus

image from webstage

Amanda Steggell sent me info about this project from 1996, by choreographer Åsa Unander-Scharin: The lamentation of Orpheus.

A industrial robot dances to the music of Claudio Monteverdi, quite beautiful really.

You can see a small quicktime of it here, and read more about the project at Unander-Scharin´s website.

Liquid Space workshop at Club Transmediale07 in Berlin

I was participating in the LiquidSpace workshop organised by the artist-architecture group lab[au] from Brussels. They are developing a software for creating 3d environments to experience image and sound in immersive installation or performance setups. In Berlin this meant a cubic setup of 4 screens and 4 speakers with the audience either on the inside or the outside. I was interested in it in relation to my own research in creating and transforming spaces with image and sound, and the workshop clarified a few differences between lab[au]´s approach and mine. Their focus is creating a virtual 3d audiovisual space for the audience to immerse into. I am more interested in using physical sound positions instead of surround sound, and projecting on the structures of the physical space itself instead of having them images floating in simulated 3d space.

The software for creating the environment is still under development, but I was especially impressed by the sound possibilities of the system.

Here is a short excerpt from some of the results from the workshop.