Morten Qvenild – The HyPer(sonal) Piano Project
(2024)
author(s): Morten Qvenild
published in: Norwegian Academy of Music
Towards a (per)sonal topography of
grand piano and electronics
How can I develop a grand piano with live electronics through iterated development loops in the cognitive technological environment of instrument, music, performance and my poetics?
The instrument I am developing, a grand piano with electronic augmentations, is adapted to cater my poetics. This adaptation of the instrument will change the way I compose. The change of composition will change the music. The change of music will change my performances. The change in performative needs will change the instrument, because it needs to do different things. This change in the instrument will show me other poetics and change my ideas. The change of ideas demands another music and another instrument, because the instrument should cater to my poetics. And so it goes… These are the development loops I am talking about.
I have made an augmented grand piano using various music technologies. I call the instrument the HyPer(sonal) Piano, a name derived from the suspected interagency between the extended instrument (HyPer), the personal (my poetics) and the sonal result (music and sound). I use old analogue guitar pedals and my own computer programming side by side, processing the original piano sound. I also take out control signals from the piano keys to drive different sound processes. The sound output of the instrument is deciding colors, patterns and density on a 1x3 meter LED light carpet attached to the grand piano. I sing, yet the sound of my voice is heavily processed, a processing decided by what I am playing on the keys. All sound sources and control signal sources are interconnected, allowing for complex and sometimes incomprehensible situations in the instrument´s mechanisms.
Credits:
First supervisor: Henrik Hellstenius
Second Supervisors: Øyvind Brandtsegg and Eivind Buene
Cover photo by Jørn Stenersen, www.anamorphiclofi.com
All other photo, audio and video recording/editing by Morten Qvenild, unless stated.
Propaganda Art from the 20th to the 21st Century
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Jonas Staal
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This study by artist Jonas Staal explores the development of propaganda art from the 20th to the 21st century.
Staal defines propaganda as the performance of power by means of the equation propaganda = power + performance. Through his work as a propaganda researcher and practice as a propaganda artist, he argues that different structures of power generate different forms of propaganda and therefore different forms of propaganda art.
Whereas in the context of the 20th century Staal discusses the differences between avant-garde, totalitarian, and modernist propaganda art, in the 21st century he proposes the categories of War on Terror Propaganda Art, Popular Propaganda Art, and Stateless Propaganda Art. By means of concrete examples of artists and artworks within each of these categories, he attempts to show how the performance of power in the 21st century translates into different visual forms, and how they shape and direct our reality.
Staal’s study shows that power and art exist in continuous interaction. Propaganda and propaganda art are not terms that only refer to the past, but concepts and practices through which we can understand the construction of reality in the present.
How to Do Things with Performance? Miten tehdä asioita esityksellä?
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Annette Arlander, Tero Nauha, Hanna Järvinen, Pilvi Porkola
connected to: University of the Arts Helsinki
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This is the website and the open archive of the four-year research project HOW TO DO THINGS WITH PERFORMANCE? funded by the Finnish Academy.
Nämä ovat nelivuotisen Suomen Akatemian rahoittaman tutkimushankkeen MITEN TEHDÄ ASIOITA ESITYKSELLÄ? verkkosivut ja avoin arkisto.