Concept

An interactive composition resulting in a series of workshops and performances. The content of the composition is shaped by the group gathered around it. Intended for performers from all walks of life, of all levels and backgrounds.

The score of the composition is transmitted in real time as a graphic or traditional notation, oral or electronic signal, and can take realtime feedback or spatial measurements (such as readings of performers' movements, sensor data, etc.)

Performers may work around a fixed theme, practice synchronization, or think of composition as a tool to explore performance and interaction in a broader sense.

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The work challenges general perceptions of the relationship between performance and composition as well as performer and audience. Could we accept the existence of multiple interpretations? The composition seeks to serve the community formed around it by enabling open-endedness.

The composer's job is to maintain the composition so that it can combine the elements / actors included in the performance. Lack of authorship can seem like a challenge when moving to the unknown, unpracticed - each performer is free to follow or resist the instructions given, freeing to take on a more active role, developing intuitive reactions to the score.

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The use of scores in music has developed alongside folk traditions. Choreographic notation remains marginal - bodily expression reveals inaccuracies in the notation of complex gestures, which, when reinterpreted, can only benefit certain types of work. In the age of recorded media, music received a fixed equivalent to the score in the shape of the recording.

By the 20th century at the latest, with the predominance culture in recorded form, interactivity in physical expression was marginalized as countercultures. In the elitist worlds of classical music and high art, elements of folk and communal art are encapsulated, while the myth of the individual artist genius is being eforced to this day.

The composition under development (as a reform of the traditions of composition and choreography) can help alleviate the power imbalance that accompanies historical conventions and explore new forms of leadership and themes of wordless, affect-sensitive communication as part of group work.

The intention is that the musical notation is built as an open platform challenging the composer (as a member of the group) to study and clarify the content’s sign representation from a contemporary perspective. Utilizing ‘here and now’, the work can affirm diversity within an reinforced collective practice.

The composition is rebuilt each time, based on jointly defined elements. This joint attunement helps different actants approach the performance more evenly in a situation where so often assumptions about technical skills, ability and professionalism become overemphasized. Preparation thus gives time to find a common basis for defining the style direction, the placement of all included elements.

Wetware Chamber Choir (2020), detail [tempo&pitch], photographer: Venla Helenius

Implementation

The first experimental version of the work was an intervention in Helsinki’s theater academy’s smoking booth in November 2018 (Documented on film as as 'We smoke with you'). The algoritm behind this work was in its infancy, so the notation consisted of simple light signals that triggered phrases from the performers’ own repetition-based vocabulary. The group consisted of one dancer, a musician, and an actor and a synthesizer, all of whom acted in their own ways, avoiding direct confrontation in a comically small space while amount of smoke changed the dynamics of commands. Addiction, smoking culture and withdrawal served as thematic resources.

The second iteration was a public demo in the Venice building in the former mental hospital of Lapinlahti, where two dancers were given pre-recorded instructions and keywords out of a precomposed database. The orientation of the two dancers was followed and compared by a computer algorithm that aimed toward coordinating movements by feeding balanced instructions, while divergent instructions were given in the case that performed movements would seem to coincide. Corresponding sound waves formed a background, modulating in accordance with the data on the dancers’ movements.

Next, together with Elina Rantasuo, a retrospective the communal project, Bread Omens was realized as an online exhibition titled ‘Fold Like Dough’. A 10-hour workshop, where people gathered to spend time while doing baking-related tasks together via video conferencing was realized as part of the show. I assembled a six-person working group, which at the beginning of the day prepared a collectively written guideline for the event, a score. During the day, the audience joined the platform to participate in the activities,

as each participant focused on their own intermittent activity during the pandemic as a reminder of the necessity of maintaining microbial activity despite measures of hygiene.

At the artist residency 'The Croft' in Ekenäs, maintained by the Pro Artibus foundation, I worked on a composition from an installation, which was on display in the group exhibition 'Abstract' at Sinne, Helsinki. The piece was intended as an interactive choreography based on two people’s expressions of affection, but since conditioned worsened throughout springtime, I ended up bringing together ideas as an installation instead. Sound acted as a bridge between the microbiota inside fermentation vessels I brought to the space and the “normal flora” of the bodies of visitors. Resonant frequencies of the space formed the basis for a composition unraveling over the summer as a wine from locally sourced pinecones developed inside the work.

As an artists’ initiative, the ‘Big Wet’ exhibition was organized at Haukilahti Water Tower in Espoo on August 29, where I showed song cycle that was composed algorithmically during the HIAP artist residency in Suomenlinna in June-August. The idea was to explore a unique location as a sonorous stage up in the air, where the audience was activated walk across the balcony orbiting the tower to hear the whole composition through a series of speakers. This work, too, had to adapt to the waves of the pandemic, and five parts of the song cycle were recorded in quarantine by Kristina Bakic.

Wetware Chamber Choir (2020), detail [coriander sprouting], photo: Venla Helenius

Prospective conclusions

I look forward to working with professionals who are open to new forms of composition, unique combinations! Personally, I have more music and sound art experience from the side of the art world, where working is experimental but not having the same history in regard to notation. It’s about breaking away from learnt ways of approaching composition. Collaboration in these new assemblages can lead to a wider network where I hope to be able to program / compose in a way that brings together performers from wildly different backgrounds and artistic fields in new constellations in a world of realigning histories.