Open Call: The Sequencer

Info

THE SEQUENCER laboratory starts with an artistic research action that investigates the interaction between GIF Art, Dance, Music and Theater. The aesthetic orientation of the workshop is formulated around the creative principles specific to GIF Art and we aim, throughout its development, to find the most organic solutions to present a performative content, live, in a new and original aesthetic pattern, resulted through the “genetic crossing” of a digital image format (GIF) with organic art forms (dance, theater, music). The lab gives us the opportunity to experiment with new ways of developing and performing content that we will be able to present later in the established context of a performance. We are also trying to get rid of the working techniques specific to the classical arts. We will integrate in the process of elaborating the artistic content a new methodology, inspired by the working tools specific to the animation programs. For this we will invent a new, virtual tool, which we will generically call THE SEQUENCER.

The sequencer is a kind of virtual working tool, (a way of self-programming our body to move in repetitive sequences or to sequence any physical action) with the help of which we divide a choreographic content (or movement) into several fragments. Each fragment is to be subjected to a process of “optimization” during which, just as a photograph, we will develop its content and significance in an expressive plane (the body), starting from the technical procedures we encounter among the specific working tools of animation programs or audio-video editing. The sequencer is the process of DEVELOPING a content. We use the sequencer (a set of predefined rules) to build, alter, recompose, resize the original content. The basis of LIVE performance is built right around this real-time reformatting of the content I’ve chosen. I have a physical activity that I subject to a transformation process in which I use the tools specific to photo or animation software. Accelerate, Pause, Intensify, Decrease, Emotionally Colorize, Spatialize… etc.

The sequencer creates his own aesthetics by overlapping several discourses and aesthetic elements in a focused visual framework, delimited by the spatial structure (if we have a setting) or the area of ​​the performance hall. Physical actions (resulting from the optimization process) last a maximum of 3 seconds and are performed in a loop, adding variations in energy and psychological “temperature”, which can change the initial content or lead to a discovery, followed by the performance of new content.

Following this artistic approach, the potential spectator does not receive a concrete narrative message, but is exposed to many ideas, like a puzzle or windows that open and overlap, expressed in images or micro-actions that will be assembled in a non-narrative context, perhaps even randomly. The choreographic compound (even random) cannot have, therefore, an epic thread, but rather will be guided by the energetic veins of each action. Choreography has no foundations related to the narrative side but can start from a visual, dynamic, sound or psycho-emotional construction.

The sequencer can be understood as a kind of body self-programming (“software”) integrated into our mode of operation or as a fragmentation system through which we choose to present a more complex physical action. We create an image/micro-action with the help of the body that we sequence (sequencer) and we “optimize” it (optimiser) by reproducing it repetitively (loop), using various virtual instruments (tools) inspired by specific animation or audio-video editing programs.