RPM's Remixed is a telematic, transdisciplinary performance based on remixing Alvin Lucier's "RPM's" score – integrating dance, video and sound improvisation between artists in New York, Houston, Tampa, and Los Angeles. Alvin Lucier, a well-known composer of music and sound installations that explore natural phenomena and resonance, is renowned for making spaces "sing." This piece explores the possibilities of using one of his scores to make a virtual space "sing" by using improvisational techniques as well as the natural feedback and delay created by streaming.
Using Alvin Lucier’s “RPM’s” score as a base for motif, RPM’s Remixed seeks to create a connection via interdisciplinary improvisation and distributed performance, thereby constructing a virtual space that only exists as the improvisation occurs. Themes exploring isolation, intersection, and madness reverberate through images, body and sound. Dancers in Houston, Texas and Tampa, Florida collaborate with sound artists in Los Angeles, California and New York, New York, while realtime processing of the video images is driven partially by the performers’ movements. Motion analysis is sent over the network to trigger aspects of video manipulation, further blurring the lines of authorship and contributing to the impromptu chemistry. Lucier’s original “RPM’s” score was a tongue-in-cheek take on creating sound based on depressing and releasing the accelerator of an Aston Martin engine. The score itself is a series of nonsensical curvatures and dashes – nonsensical, that is, until a personal interpretation of each written gesture is applied. Taking this a step further, the cast of RPM’s Remixed deconstructs the score, into dance gestures, violin strokes, guitar riffs, and sound and video mashing. The challenge is not only to collaborate within one’s own medium but to improvise successfully between mediums and within a virtual space. Can the magic of improvisation reach across the ether? Join us and see… For the proposed performance at ISEA, a modified version will be produced, in which one of the sound artists, one of the dance artists, and the director/video artist will be present in the physical space in San Jose, performing and doing realtime processing. RPM’s Remixed was first premiered on 6 August 2005. Documentation is available at the following URL: http://www.funksoup.com/rpms.htm Collaborators: New York , NY Vedat Emre Balik: sound artist Josephine Dorado: direction/video processing Los Angeles, CA Laura Escude: sound artist Tampa, FL Rachel Bishop: dancer Houston, TX Elizabeth Haselwood: dancer |