The platform represents a ‘white cube’, which once was full of information, noise and colours. The platform is furnished with 20th Century’s Bauhaus aesthetics, and1960s Fluxus and Avant-Garde’s artworks. It includes 1920s Signatures aspired Piet Mondrian’s abstraction and Wassily’s Kadinsky synaesthetic coloured shapes; 1960s John Cage’s noise and silence relationship; with an attempt to make sense of the non-sense when using the “source of randomness”. By making different choices the structure forms differently when performed live.
The platform includes video with pre-composed electronic tracks, audio field recordings, and writing. The title of the platform suggests that colours can make up signatures. The title does not aim for any political or cultural subject matter that the word ‘colour’ may relate to.
Entering the platform, you find yourself at the top left corner. Under the title ‘What Colour is your Signature?’ there is an audio player of a metronome which advises you to keep track of the main rhythm. You don’t need to keep the metronome audible when you compose; however, you can revisit it whenever you need to get advice.
Before you begin composing, please scroll up and down, slide left and right to get a sense of how the platform navigates. Then write down your chosen materials after following the prescribed score. Writing down your choices will help you keep record of the time of each press, and therefore your composition will be more precise.
You will need pen and paper, an audio recorder (to record your reading of the text), and headphones to listen to the given materials. Please keep the extracted data of your choices and email them to contact@nicolinastylianou.com.
Act(ual) 1:
Choose one of the written texts.
Act(ual) 2:
Choose one coloured circle and press play. Listen to the composition and draw lines with the pen on the paper. The lines serve to show your understanding of structures. You will use the lines as your notation. Prepare yourself to apply the lines as your reading speed and volume.
Act(ual) 3:
Choose one video. The video is the full duration of your composition.
Act(ual) 4:
Choose three squares, the colour of which are included in your chosen video.
Act(ual) 5:
Choose different time frames (in seconds) to press each audio. You can get assistance by using the metronome.
Act(ual) 6:
Write down your choices, timings, and score on the paper.
Act(ual) 7:
Perform your composition.
Example:
Text: ’I took a deep breath…’ > purple circle: includes a recording from an analogue film machine. From the left (ear) side you listen to the noise picked up from the coil, whereas the right (ear) side includes another rhythm which you can follow. Choose one (or both) sides and draw lines on the piece of paper. > video: Seagulls in Venice > squares: grey, brown, black > write down when to read the text and when to press play: 10s, 35s, 50s > perform your composition.
looking at a piece of paper without a story
functioning
finction ing
function ing
finctioning doesn't work
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
silence
"After a day of rehearsing the paragraph 6 of 'The Great Learning' by Cornelius Cardew, and listening about Jacques Rancière at HIAP in Suomenlinna. I came home, googled 'Jazz in Chicago', clicked on the images, and when my eyes reached the image of a saxophonist, suddenly, for few seconds, I heard a saxophone playing some tunes. So I tried to turn the volume of my laptop down, and that moment I realised that the sound was surely not coming from it. Then I began to reach for identification and felt like people were jamming on the upper floor. But as soon as I thought that this might be a dysfunction within reality, a mingling of the senses, or the gap between reality and imagination, the sound disappeared."
30th May 2019
1 Fluxus was an art movement back in the 1960s, where avant-garde artists explored notions of the everyday life, rather than attempted elite art productions. One can recognise embodied patterns that are developed through Dada, and Futurism.
2 Fluxus aesthetics involve approaches towards the presence of the artist in the artwork, life and death, experimentalism, simplicity rather than complexity, humour, chance, questioning art and life, playfulness, and often questioning the relationship between the performer and the viewer. In other words, Fluxus can be considered as a question on questioning taste in the arts, and how does taste over value become essential?
When one comes into contact with different senses of rhythm, then the perceptual level of flow reaches the unconscious, and therefore creates unconscious behaviours that are connected with movement. In that sense, rhythm is the impulse each human receives and reacts to. Therefore, imbalance and anxiety are not results, nor creations of history, nor about past experiences or identity. But rather, it is about rhythmic performative decisions.
thinkinginanimalsthinkinginanimalsthinkinginanimalsthinkinginanimalsthinkinginanimalsthinkinginanimalsthinkinginanimals
The loss of communication
between two happens,
firstly,
when the pattern of one pattern is patterned.
secondly,
when the pattern of one is patterned to the other.
thirdly,
when the pattern of the other is not perceived as a patterned pattern.
The loss of communication, then,
is transpired by the lack of acknowledging the patterns as entities whom they keep a consistent space in human behaviour.
further in thought,
the embodiement of a pattern, does not necessarily dig into the other's patterned pattern,
which marks,
the initiation of a communicative system of oneself to themeselves,
but instead,
creates a loss of communication between two different people.
19 February 2019
excerpt from I think in animals audio visual work in progress
There was a mystery about the silenced movement and the paralyzed hands. […] The hands continued to move backwards.
"I think in animals,” she said.
The narrator continued to negotiate the state before the immanent existence of objects. Her interest was to delve into the noise. She thought about the pre-identification of an object, and the affect of aesthetics considering the unmeasurable prompts if they were experienced by an infant.
She then asked herself, how do animals think of objects?
The hands were sterilised and the mystery began to blur, whilst the tunnel stayed still in front of her.
[…]
She then began to realise that certain events recur regularly.
She then began to realise that certain events overlap.
She then began to realise that certain events are rooted patterns.
and her eyes began to see her mouth sucking her mother’s nipple pleasantly
Glitz
caught with a cigarette feeding her lips.
[…]
I took a deep breath, and blew towards the butterfly
gently. The movement of the wind took over the
butterfly. But the connection in the air, between
myself and the butterfly grew stronger.
I became aware of the invisible string that
surrounded us. I was speechless, I could only hear
the tasteful sounds of my breath. The butterfly kept
moving with the same rhythm as I do, and we began to
dance like aliens.
Creating affect,
creating changes in thought patterns.
Try to blow a butterfly gently, and see the
affection of the chaos coming to you, in distance.
18 November 2018
and when you thought your heart was melting,
whilst finding the point of affection,
you entered the noise you thought has awoken you,
restless from the labyrinth you had to take.
10 February 2019
A healed eye,
in the north side,
a cut of thread
in the middle of the night
the egg is broken,
ready to manifest its
re-birth
2 December 2018
Then the doctor vaccinated me and the colors blurred in front of me, being reckless of what was happening. The virus was transported into the heart and mingled hearing with my touch.
Then the doctor told me that vaccines can be injected every few years, just to make sure that the lack of communication will still be in touch with my hearing.
He told me that it may affect other parts of the body, and that faces matters of embodiment and obedience.
12 July 2018