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The Great Score
'Seppo Gründler
Seppo Gründler
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'Elisabeth Schimana
Elisabeth Schimana
The performance of The Great Score is part four of a project conceived to extend over five years and eight concerts. The material for The Great Score will be worked on in seven cities. It will be created at the current location and will be presented under the use of the base-structure as an hour-long concert, whereby the score of the base-structure will be left to artists on-location for interpretation. In the seventh performance all material results in a seven-hour piece. In the eighth performance all interpretations result in a net-concert in their respective real locations and in virtual space.
There exists no formal, written score; instead, the score is projected onto the stage and the performers. The video projection is simultaneously stage lighting and score. The temporal structure becomes discernable from the changes.
Each concert is preceded by a showing of a 21-minute CD, a condensation of performances to date. The CDs are available exclusively by subscription in a presentation binder. In this way, a connection to the audience is maintained throughout the duration of the project.The Great Score Base Structure of the Score:gründler / schimana >>
Material Creation1 >> Freezing2 >> Regulation3
computer >>
Data Acquisition1 >> Analysis2 >> Synthesis3 Material Creation1
Elisabeth Schimana transforms her voice with analog resonance filters and ring modulation. These will be controlled by a theremin antenna. Seppo Gründler uses his electric guitar as sound material and processes the sound with analog and digital devices. The sounds created by one are meant as source material for the other, to be reworked at their discretion. The sound generators of each are crosswise connected with one another. The reciprocal access of material leads to a destabilization of one’s own control. Sounds coming from one person that are already dislodged from the event often live further visà- vis—the power of disposal over the material changes from a dictatorial singular to a dialogand material-based. Especially noteworthy is the aesthetic of the performing practice, the live-context, the stage situation.
Data Acquisition1
Parallel to the creation of material, a computer records the audio data for later analysis. Independent from this, single loops will be generated.
Freezing2
The short loops will be worked over with analog and digital processes and stacked as body of sounds.
Analysis2
The structure and sound parameters for the following part will be derived from the recorded audio data.
Regulation3
As sound directors, the performers subtly tamper with the generated sounds.
Synthesis3
Based on the data from the analysis, the computer synthesizes the sound into a four-channel sound stream.A Brief Digression Too many notebook owners—men, generally—simply set or seat themselves upon a stage and deliver a laptop concert—a regrettable phenomenon whose capacity to appall begins with the very term “laptop” or “Powerbook-concert.” To each sound, its little graphic— and no matter how transported and transformed, the question that usually arises is: what’s the point? A sense of yearning back to the days of the Old Masters of electronic music has already set in. Nevertheless, there are still not many signs of structure and theory formation or of an artistic confrontation with content, since academic institutions are concentrating primarily on the creation of new software and hardware solutions. It’s high time for a substantive, aesthetic formulation of questions and for a process of critical reflection on the matter of technical overkill—the effort to endow art projects with meaning solely through the amassment and deployment of high-tech. This project is also meant as a basis for discussions of this issue.
Translated from German by Mel Greenwald
Seppo Gründler: guitars, analogue and digital instruments
Elisabeth Schimana: voice, theremin, analogue and digital instruments
Elisabeth Kopf: graphic design
The Great Score has received support from BKA, IEM, SKE and Werkstadt Graz.
Thanks to the Austrian Cultural Forum branches in Budapest, Moscow and The Haague.
http://partitur.at
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