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Collisions
' Transcenic
Transcenic
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' Théâtre d‘en Face
Théâtre d‘en Face
Sunday, September 9th, 1984, 10:00 p.m.
Brucknerhaus, Grand Foyer
Additional performances:
Monday, September 10th, 10:00 p.m.;
Tuesday, September 11th, 8:00 p.m.;
Wednesday, September 12th, 10:00 p.m.;
Thursday, September 13th, 10:00 p.m.
MYTHOLOGICAL-ELECTRONICAL MUSIC THEATRE (with the friendly support of computer Video Film LEAS [Laboratoire d'électronique] IMEDIA/CNET)
In cooperation with CAC de Douai.
With the friendly support of the French Ministry of Culture
CONCEPTION AND REALIZATION: Pierre Friloux-Schilansky and Françoise Gedanken
MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS: Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Pascale Criton, Kaija Saariaho
COORDINATIONS OF SOUND TECHNOLOGY: Gyorgy Kurtag, assisted by Erwin Sampermans
COSTUMES:
Dramaturgical and technical conception: Pierre Friloux-Schilansky
Creation and styling: Sylva & Jacob Valentyne Bosman
Conception of structures: Felix Perrotin
SCENOGRAPHY: Pierre Friloux-Schilansky & Felix Perrotin
VIDEO UNIT INSTALLATION: TRANSCENIC and AVP (Antwerp Video Projects)
Responsible for cameras and art direction: Jo Vandormael
SYNTHETIC SCENOGRAPHIC IMAGES: Chiara Boeri & Pierre Friloux-Schilansky, realized by COMPUTER VIDEO FILMS Comp., Paris
ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATICS SYSTEMS: Jean Angelidis and LEAS Comp. (Laboratoire d'électronique Angelidis/Sarrault), Grenoble, & Fabrice Fatoux (sculptor)
INFORMATICS SYSTEMS FOR THE DIGITAL REGISTRATION OF GESTURES: Studio GRAME, Lyon; James Giroudon, Pierre Alain Jaffrennou
VIDEO CONTROLLED SYNTHESIZER: Inventor: Sylvain Aubin, Marketing by IMEDIA Comp., Paris (Copyright CNET)
DISTRIBUTION: Sjanneke Broekmeulen, Mia Bundervoet, Luc Carels, Marc Geedts, Conny Thomas, Carin Vandenbussche, Ludo van Passel, Pierre Rigopoulo, percussion
INTERPRETATION OF THE ELECTRONICAL MUSICAL PART: Gyorgy Kurtag
We owe special thanks to:
Mr. Mario Borillo, mathematician/researcher at the CNRS—Laboratories for intelligence formalization
Mr. Jacques Droulez, Medical doctor/Informatics researcher at the laboratory for sensorial neurophysiology at the CNRS
Mr. Jean-Louis Weissberg, critic of representative media at the University of Paris XIII
THÉÂTRE D´EN FACE The Théâtre d'en Face was founded in 1976 by Pierre Friloux-Schilansky and Françoise Gedanken. As an anti-total theatre it unites different art forms, each preserving its independence and consciously avoiding to mingle them. The style of Théâtre d'en Face is somewhere between minimalism and oversize.
Pierre Friloux-Schilansky works as the spiritual father of the theatre, and uses the archaic-cultic instruments of the primitive theatre. The themes he deals with are "Man as an Individual and Man in Society", and "The World of Today and its Mythology". He makes intense use of dance, music, voice, performing arts and video.
Choice of recent productions:
1976/77: "Souvenirs d'en Face", 1977/78 "Le Banquet", "L'execrée", 1978/79 "Ritual Di Matrimonio", "Simultaneité Dans 3 Chambres Sous Video", 1979/80 "Wedding Ceremony", "Bach Tout Hysteria", 1980/81 "Rencontres", "Ecrans Noirs", 1981/82 "Bruiloftsfeest", 1982/83 "Ecrans Noirs II", 1984 "Tegen het uurwerk", Indian cap Antwerp, Co-production Transcenic/Antwerp Video Projects.
TRANSENIC Transcenic is an art laboratory for research and creation in the field of multi-media and was installed with the goal to create new points of encounter between living spectacle, Arts, Science and Technology.
COLLISIONS Collisions is a defilé of mythological-imaginary creatures as they result from the fantastic connection of the human body with digital machines and technological devices. This production is leading the Paris Théâtre d'en Face onto a new path in the conflict between Man and Technology. The general conception starts at the present stage of matters. The confrontation of man with high technology is to be found in all areas of everyday life. The machine exerts influence upon mankind even in the most private of spheres—and he shows his reactions with his gestures, his senses, his nerves. This basic conflict is symbolized in Collisions by chimerae, by Men-Machine-Creatures symbolizing the connections between man and machine, just as in the old mythologies the centaur or the satyr symbolize the relationship between man and animal.
Every single creature, every "chimera" is treated in a specific technical and scenical manner within the setting of the project. The patterns of the single scenes derive from the contents of pictures, for instance from paintings of the Old Netherlands Masters, transfigured in their sense through a specific technical equipment—and even reducing them to absurdity. With the aid of metaphorical intensification an imaginary world of our post-industrial modernity is evoked and at the same time the ambivalent relations of man and technology—created as well as feared by Man—is questioned.
Thematical Elements
"Collisions" starts with a scenic arrangement to Breughel's "The Blind". This basic pattern provokes the eternal question of sight and clairvoyance: Where are we going, who is the blind, he who searches the way through the night, or he who ignores his night on the way? "Collisions" makes the blind person's stick a video-camera, the monitor a point of reference.
This creation is transformed into a technological sphinx: Speculations about our fears and imponderabilities become topics to be discussed, the Oedipus of our future appears on stage. Once again the scene changes: A young bride in her glass-fibre garments enjoys her cathodic wedding and Dracula nourishes himself in his sinistre passion with electrons from the image of his belle.
A phantastic chariot is an allegory, while horse and knight veil the infinity of micro-chips, clattering printers producing azure and flesh-colored trains.
The final tableau shows the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Virgin standing as if petrified. The Computer Child receives the homages of his contemporaries up high in his cathodic manger in the light of his digital smile.
Stage Setting / Video Installations Costumes
Every figure is "encircled" by a costume from electronical components: video units, computers, printers, labelling machines, etc.
The different figures (the blind person, the bride, Dracula, the Sphinx, the allegory "ergonomy/interaction", the Adoration of the Shepherds,, the Virgin and the Child) follow each other, encounter each other in scenes and tableaus to build up the chronology of the spectacle. Simultaneously the figures produce—together with the images delivered by the video installations—fragments of faces on different scales and from different angles, as "caught" according to the situation. The discrete manipulation of the video direction in a somewhat graphic composition—reanimates the deliberate interrelation between "live scenes" and the integrated video-effects on stage.
The composition of a new fiction on the screens, the result of this start-up by the live-performance of the actors allows the image—doubled and newly created—to play a role in the total dramaturgy like any real actor.
A special relation to the music is established by the use of the "Manorine" (system: video-controlled synthesizer), which introduces parameters derived from the video image causing a pre-programmed synthesizer to react to or to alter the music.
Music
Three composers are working from the beginning of events on stage, they propose rules for the transformations upon which the different sound spaces are built up. Through the direct game of changes a gesture is continued, transformed from movement into an image, retransmitted by the eye of a camera, transformed into a sound. This sound is transferred to the musicians (percussion and two synthesizers) and evokes a musical structure, uniting all of the elements of this cycle. Invisibly in the background is the Manorine, delivering control signals from the video images to the synthesizer, which—in turn—operates on the basis of the concrete sounds. The machine filters and decodes movements and sounds in order to produce new ones, under the guidance and with the orchestration by the "operators".
All in all, the interactions are subject to permanent change and editing within a network of unbroken movement. The structure thus remains open and advancing in development.
The inventor of the Manorine is Sylvain Aubin, the copyright is with the Centre National d'Etude des Telecommunications, the marketing is done by IMEDIA, Paris.
The basic idea of the Manorine is the creation of an interactive orbit of sound, with the sound production controlled by movement and positions of a body in space.
"Are we not assisting a real change in our way of life, our behaviour, our mentality, our culture? New technologies are modifying our cities, our leisure, the world of labour and even our relations to each other. And this is going on with a radicality without precedent in the history of civilizations, caused by the enormous expansion for the recent technological universe.
In such a modified environment the theatre adds a new dimension. The theatre—at least this is one of its constants—has to present its images of the world to its contemporaries in a way ensuring the deciphering of the great questions of our time in a sensible and poetical way.
This may be an explanation for the technological concerns expressing themselves in TRANSCENIC's program in a twofold way: On one hand here is the explorations, with the goal of integrating new systems, new generations of instruments and devices for the creation of real or virtual images into the scenic conceptions, so as to participate in some way in the re-invention of scenographic architecture and of spectacular perception by creating a new fiction-machinery.
On the other hand, as there is no neutral medium, the place and functions occupied by technologies in advanced industrial societies can be questioned, and this under different aspects: imagination, ideologies, mythologies, individual and social behaviour.
In order to do this, we start from the basis of the "living" on stage and from what this allows for the mise-en-scene of the interrelation Man/Machine."
Pierre Friloux-Schilansky
The COMPUTER-VIDEO-FILM Company The COMPUTER-VIDEO-FILM Company was founded in April 1983 by Cesare Massarenti, Guy Seligman, Guy Sachez and Roger Serre. The company tries to put powerful computers at the disposition of all creative artists, so as to give them the facilities to create two- and three-dimensional images.
One of the characteristics of the company is the overall view of the new technologies, their application being controlled not by technicians, but artists. With its computer controlled cutting facilities, for both film and video, COMPUTER-VIDEO-FILM ranks among the top companies in technological equipment.
LEAS / Laboratoire d'électronique Two young engineers, Jean Angelidis and Jacques Sarrault are the leaders of this company, the activities of which are oriented towards the applied research of analog electronics and microinformatics, with an area of work from the construction of prototypes to the production of small series.
AVP / Antwerp Video Projects Jo Vandormael—Erwin Sampermans—Chris Corens—Patrick van Linden—Rees van der Geer
A group of young Flemish artists working on the "New Images". Their work concentrates upon the living spectacle" and theatre and dance are raw material to them, to be worked further by cinematographical or electronic means (video). They produce (and co-produce) mostly in Antwerp, where they live and work.
Cooperation with TRANSCENIC, right now on the project "Tegen het uurwerk" ("counter the clock"), a video-movie by Pierre Friloux-Schilansky.
Studio GRAME, Lyon James Giroudon—Pierre Alain Jaffrennou
Open for every form of contemporary musical expression, the GRAME-Studios offer a working structure providing help by material, administrative and intellectual resources to every creative artist, whether for instrumental music, tape music, mixed music or musical theatre. Its actions in the research area extend above all to new technologies and especially to musical informatics, inscribing themselves to the problems connected with the creation and diffusion of works as well as pedagogics.
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