Nodos Activos + Las Julias Experiment
(2023)
author(s): Yamil Hasbun Chavarría, Pamela Jiménez Jiménez
published in: Research Catalogue
On July the 4th 2023, the Nodos Activos Teams was invited to participate in an event named ‘Las Julias’ as organized by the School of Performative Arts (Escuela de Artes Escénicas) from the Universidad Nacional. An event that allows researchers from the aforementioned school to show the academic community of UNA their ongoing or concluded research experiences. Typically, participants are students and academics from the Performative Arts disciplines. However, Nodos Activos combines an interdisciplinary team of students and academics from Design, Visual Arts and Performative Arts, and its products reflect that heterogeneity.
Thus, the activity was planned as a means to allow Performative Arts students and academics to exit their comfort zones, and explore the research and creation methods, tools and concepts of the visual arts and design fields in a ‘hands on’ activity developed through an active concept of playfulness and abstract thinking-and-doing.
Migration and Listening: Political Life in Motion
(2023)
author(s): Ximena Alarcón and Ed McKeon
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Boundaries, thresholds, and limits characterise both political geography and the politics of voice and listening. The effect of hearing yourself speak, as Derrida noted, is foundational for sovereignty, self-identity, and relations to others. In this conversation, we explore experiences of border crossings and passing across limits through migration and movement alongside corresponding encounters with Deep Listening. Alarcón reflects on her experience of migration from Colombia to the UK and how this also involves ‘speaking and travelling in-between different languages’. McKeon draws on experience of ‘losing’ his accent, the voice’s marker of political identity. For both of us, Deep Listening has become an essential resource to forgo the desires of returning ‘home’ or arrival with their visa privileges and passports of legitimised status. Migration and movement are instead embraced for their potential to constitute another practice of centring and of balance without fixed and immovable boundaries. We aim to articulate this politics of listening and voice not through conventions of debate and polemics, defending ideological territories, but through exchange in dialogue, in what passes in the movement between us.
Talking Transformations: Home on the Move
(2022)
author(s): Ricarda Vidal, Manuela Perteghella
published in: Research Catalogue
This exposition comprises an online version of a travelling exhibition which was curated by Manuela Perteghella and Ricarda Vidal in 2018/19 as a direct outcome of our collaborative Arts-Council-funded project "Talking Transformations: Home on the Move".
The online exhibition charts the journeys of two poems about "home" around Europe and the transformations they underwent as they were translated through different languages and into film.
Initiated as a response to Brexit, the poetic journeys focused on the EU countries most important to migration into and out of the UK—for migration to the UK, Romania and Poland; for migration from the UK, France and Spain.
The online exhibition invites viewers to listen to the poets and translators recite their literary versions and to watch the artists' filmic interpretations. It also includes recordings of translations made by Ricarda and Manuela in response to the the multiple versions of the initial source poems. The exposition concludes with a section dedicated to reflections about the project by some of the people who took part in it.
Future Earth Scream Now - The Solresol Birdsong Translator
(2021)
author(s): Jim Lloyd
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
In this exposition, we describe a ‘speculative fabulation’ on communication with birds. A device was built that ‘listens’ to birdsong and translates this into human speech utilising the obscure musical language Solresol (François Sudre, 1866). Birdsong is analysed and converted into musical notes (one octave in the scale of C Major: do-re-me-fa-sol-la-ti). These seven notes are grouped to form four-note ‘words’ that are looked-up in the Solresol-English dictionary. Each note also has a rainbow colour assigned to it. In a variety of configurations, the device can output the birdsong, notes, music, translated words, and colours. Text and MIDI (music) files can both be saved for further output or processing. The software can run in a variety of modes and on a variety of hardware, including PC and Raspberry Pi. It can make use of both live and recorded birdsong. The device and software are described, as well as several examples of its outputs, such as ‘auto-poetry’ and music. The presentation of the work and modes of engagement are described. The contextual significance is discussed in relation to claims about the practice as artistic research.
From the pit to the stage: a comparative approach to solo bass playing
(2021)
author(s): Felipe Devincenzi
published in: Codarts
This research attempts to translate technical skills and notions from lyrical singing to double bass playing. Based on the Donizetti-Bottesini partnership, the idea was highly influenced by translation concepts developed by theorists Ricardo Piglia and Walter Benjamin. Research strategies include expert feedback, side by side work with tenors, experimental practice and extensive recording analysis on selected repertoire. Together, they outline a basic strategy that enriches solo performance. Conclusions could be applied to any similar repertoire by any other performer who reads this report.
Dear Rita
(2016)
author(s): Otso Huopaniemi
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
"Dear Rita," a series of eight letters to Rita Raley (Professor of English, University of California, Santa Barbara), is a research response to Raley’s presentation “Algorithmic Translations,” which she gave at the "Performance, Technology, Translation" event in New York in April 2015. Organized by The Barnard Center for Translation Studies and the Department of Theatre, the event explored “the theoretical and practical intersections between contemporary technologies of translation and performance.” In addition to presentations by Raley and W. B. Worthen, the symposium included a performance of love.abz, an independent art work and the artistic part of my doctoral degree at University of the Arts Helsinki, Theater Academy.
In "Dear Rita," I use screen captures of the Google Translate website to address through translation the many links and questions that arise from Raley’s insightful presentation. I comment on Raley’s discussion of Eric Zboya’s and Baden Pailthorpe’s work, both visual artists and researchers, and relate them to my own ongoing artistic research project into what I call “live writing.” My inquiry deals with a form of improvisatory, collaborative dramatic writing that employs algorithmic mediation and translation. In asking what the task of the machine translator in performance is or could be, I remark on some of the themes Raley discusses, including those relating to authorship, the nature of algorithmic translation, and the gesture of insistent re-translation of already machine translated text.