4. Reflections
During the installation setup, audience experience involved a closer contact with the iterations of the interactions across material developed during the performance. The previously-made objects presented together with the just-made one that was left on the working bench at the end of each hour, expressed a longer manifestation of the temporal level of co-composing than during the performance, while sound was referred to at that point by audience members as ambient and environmental and as a 'thumbnail sketch' of the performance.
Following the installation-performance, members of the audience were interviewed about their experience during the event and inside the installation space. Some characterised the processed sound as 'invisible sculpting' which, created an interdependent situation between the two modalities. Overall, audience members stated that the relationships between acoustic and electronic sound material varied both throughout single performances and the multiple iterations of the piece. Another observation made was that the impact of the working tools on the sound environment seemed to change according to how I interacted with the software on the computer. Interviewees also stressed that being in the workshop space enhanced both their material and immaterial experience of all the elements of the work by seeing/hearing, which was amplified by the processed soundscape. Some audience members were interacting with the objects by touching or approaching them very closely.
The combination of performance and installation provided with two ways of experiencing co-composition that were complementary to each other: the performance time allowed experiencing the co-compositional relationships, while the installation time revealed the generated material traces. This expanded the work in terms of scale, variation and multiplicity by showing the potential of co-composition in simultaneously experienced spatiotemporal levels through “equating the immediate past with the onrushing future” (Bishop-Stall and Zayne Bussey, 2013). Interviewing audience members did not aim at concretising an experience rather highlighting the personalised views and reflections on the co-compositional situation. The developed interdependent response in this work contributes insights of value to both sonic and sculptural practice: sonic responses enabled treating sculpture in a manner that is temporal, performable and directly informed by the sounds produced and the processed sounds; it used sculptural practice to inform a new approach toward a material-driven aesthetic in sound performance and production; it provided with a novel understanding of the relationships between the two modalities beyond hybrid or dual forms of art as it explored ways and spaces for transition between and across the different types of material.
About
Eleni-Ira Panourgia is an artist working at the intersection of visual and sonic arts and a teaching and research fellow at the University of Paris Est Marne-la-Vallée. She has recently completed her PhD in Art at the University of Edinburgh titled ‘Co-composition processes: form, structure and time across sculpture and sound’. Eleni-Ira works across sculpture, sound and image in a responsive and interactive way in relation to materials and their processes, spaces and technologies. She explores the potential of such complex morphologies within artistic, design and social processes. Eleni-Ira is member of Greek Sculptors’ Association, the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece, Onassis Scholars' Association, the Research Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry and RAFT Research Group. She is co-founder of sIREN research network and co-founder and managing editor of Airea: Arts and Interdisciplinary Research Journal.
The PhD research related to this exposition was undertaken in 2015-2019 at the University of Edinburgh and it was funded by the Onassis Foundation and the A.G. Leventis Foundation. Link to publication: ‘Co-composition processes: form, structure and time across sculpture and sound’
Performance 'Process/Procedure' by Eleni-Ira Panourgia, September 2018, University of Edinburgh. Still from video.
Performance 'Process/Procedure' by Eleni-Ira Panourgia, September 2018, University of Edinburgh. Photographed by Jack Walker.
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