TECHNOLOGY, AN INVISIBLE TOOL FOR THE ART

[Gilles Jobin]

Marlon Barrios asked me to post my thoughts on dance and technology in my work:

Here TEXT TO SPEECH (2008), a piece in which each dancer uses a PC with "text to speech" programs for the computers to read texts. A simple use of high end technology but in the context of the piece the manipulation of computer seems  taken out of a normal daily life and does not seem technological. Technicaly we could not have made this piece 15 years ago, and 20 years ago the portable computer was not yet avaialble for maintstream use. And dramaturgicaly neither would have it been possible, 20 years ago a portable computer would have looked like a science fiction piece! I needed the audience to relate to the piece as a contemporary problematic. A laptoop computer in 2008 is an ordinary daily life object.  When I was a kid a mobile phone was only to exists in Star Treck, now when you see an old movie you think "but why he does not use his mobile phone?". So the computer object has moved dramaturgicaly in less than 20 years from a  science fiction status  to a daily life item: We now live in this Blade Runner like world where technology is part of our life as objects, embeded in our life, our should we say that WE are embeded inside  technology.

We used computers in Text To Speech to be able read live "fake" news of war and conflicts. It was very useful in the creation process, very flexible, we could modify our texts ourselves without needing a technician.  We manipulated orignal press agency news about the war in Irak, and changed "Irak" by "Switzerland". With this little "mind" trick", we relocated distant events such as a bomb killing 20 people in a market in Bagdad by a bomb killing twenty poeple in a market in Geneva. Suddenly the "bodycount" became  real, the news became more real and  not anymore a distant lithany of  numbers of death but a reality "virtualy" located in your backyard... A brutal switch  of perpectives in the mond of the spectator. Te synthethic voice of the "text to speech" program, adds to the distanciation. Also, we were able to perform the pece in its original language, in japanase, german, french, english... This piece has been inspired by a story my uncle told me and also has to do with technology  and the impact of it into reality. When he was a young journalist in a news agency in Zurich, he received the telex with the news of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing at the end of WW2. At this time, only him had the immediate info and the words were creeping out  of the telex machine physicaly into his hands. The strip of paper coming out of the machine was slowly revealing the horror of the distant disaster. It was the power of suggestions of the words and the empathy of the reader, not the technology in itself that was revealing the horror-the same machine was also "vomiting"  "banal" news . But without the technology, this "virtual experience of reality" would not have happenned to him and marked him for life.

QUANTUM (2013) Is a piece made out after my residency at CERN, the huge particle physic laboratory based in the Geneva area who famously revelead the existence of the Higgs bozon on the 4th of July 2012. I was at CERN on that day and the "virtual" emotion of finding something truly invisble was high. It was the technology who made us capable of tinking about this discovery that can not be seen. (see my residency blog). The piece QUANTUM came out after theree months residency inside this super high tech campus, the site of the bigger machine ever built by humans... I had this "creative collission"  with co resident  german visual artist Julius von Bismarck. Julis conceived a "kynetic light instalation" operated and constructed by his regular collaborator german engenier Martin Shied (he operates  the piece on tour). Based on the pendulum principle, the 4 industrial lamps are piloted by a complicated algorythm that send signal to 4 motors that makes possible the syncronisation and variations of the movement of the lamps. It is super flexible and adaptable we can create almost any pendulum movement.

The music has been composed by American composer Caral Scaletti on her powerfull sound design machine KYMA, (she is the maker of the software of the machine and husband Kurt Heibel conceived the hardware-Kyma is one of the most powerfull soudn design computer in the market). She used   real data taken from CERN LHC by a process of "data sonification". Collaborating with phycicist Lili Asquith she managed to use real data to produce amazing music  (listen to phycicist  Lili Asquith about LHC data sonification and datata driven Kyma sound project)

 

To me, technology is a tool, something that is not to necesarely be seen for itself but necessary only if it   gives more meanig to a piece.  My next project is a 3D dance film, I am very much interested by the volume of the space virtualy created inside our brain by the trick stereo images are playing inside on our heads...

QUANTUM SET UP. THE LIGHT INSTALATION RIG////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

QUANTUM IS ON TOUR IN NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA IN OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER
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QUANTUM  WORLD TOUR  2013-15
-Première 23 september 2013  Théâtre Forum Meyrin Geneva @ CMS Experiment-Cessy France
QUANTUM world tour is part of events celebrating the 60th anniversa...

NORTH AMERICA
2-3-4th october    QUANTUM @ BAM/New York Next Wave Festival + Crossing The Lines Festival - New Settings Fondation Entreprise Hermes/USA
12-13th october   QUANTUM @ ODC/San Francisco / USA + lecture about Cern residency with Cern physicist Nicolas Chanon. With the support of Swissnex San Francisco
16-17-18th october   QUANTUM @ TDC/Vancouver / CANADA

SOUTH AMERICA
21 october         QUANTUM @ Festival Danzalborde/Matucana Theatre/Santiago de Chile/ CHILE
23 october          QUANTUM @ Festival Danzalborde/Valparaiso/ CHILE
26 october           QUANTUM @ Bienal do Dança Do Ceara/Fortaleza/BRAZIL
29-30 october      QUANTUM @ Festival Internacional Dança Belo Horizonte/ BRAZIL  + conference CERN physicist avec le soutien de Swissnex Brazil
2 november          QUANTUM @ Panorama Festival Rio de Janeiro/ BRAZIL + conference CERN physicist + Masterclass avec le soutien de Swissnex Brazil
                        
                        EUROPE
6-7-8-9th november      QUANTUM @ ARSENIC/Lausanne SWITZERLAND
12-13-14th november   A+B=X       @     ARSENIC/Lausanne SWITZERLAND

SOUTH AMERICA
21-22 november     QUANTUM @ FAEL Lima/PERU