Anatomy of the Creative Process in Viento y Mar

DESCRIPTION

We describe artistic research developed to compose an orchestral work with multimodal elements. Viento y Mar is an encounter of symphonic music, soloist percussion, and Flamenco dance. It originated from a collaboration between the composer and the performer who is a percussionist and a Flamenco dancer. Viento y Mar dialogues with expressive languages within an architecture integrating music, movement, dance, rhythm, and percussion guiding that trajectory. It is the result of interdisciplinary research on multimodal artworks, some of which presented in previous Generative Art Conferences 12. Such as in the multimodal opera Descoberta (2016) 345. Viento y Mar anchors its narrative in the dialogue of music with dance, here in the context of a soloist piece. Depicting the creative process until the emergence in an orchestral work, the video attached to this short-description shows various stages of the composition, bringing together music, dance, and scene:

The full video of the world premiere :

Figure 1: A scene from Viento y Mar showing the whole stage setup with the orchestra
in the background, the soloist, and two other percussionists.

The compositional work started by connecting Flamenco's core steps and choreography as if the wind meets the sea. In our poetic vision, the wind, portrayed by the performer's gestures and dance, encounters the sea to expand rhythmic and harmonic horizons. The work joins musical and cultural references, movement, and percussion articulated in a concert form. Orchestral curtains are open for elements of Andalusian and Gypsy culture, which are interlaced by the soloist's percussion and dance movements.

Figure 2: A performer's gesture with four mallets playing marimba.

Viento y Mar integrates sensory modalities by contrasting percussion and orchestra, clapping and tap steps, virtuosic and lyric passages. Our design concept is to articulate fields of perception in order to invite the audience to build a new experience within the concert hall. From one side the interaction between sounds, actions, and percussion, and from the other, the audience’s perspectives creating meaning. Furthermore, the composition is anchored in a collaborative methodology: interaction of ideas has driven the alignment of musical and choreographic solutions.
Another point is the integration between perception and action within the performative profile of the work. Interpreter's movements dialoguing with the orchestral sounds can be understood under the theories of Ecological Psychology described by Gibson 6 and Embodied Cognition 7. Although these perspectives embrace several models, the central concept is that most cognitive processes take place through the body's control systems, in particular, the interaction between higher cognitive functions and the sensorimotor system. In Viento y Mar, it is evidenced by the performer's ability to synchronize and organize elements from different expressive contexts.
Connecting the previous viewpoints, the compositional strategy was to explore different instrumental affordances and gestural coupling to enhance rhythmic patterns, harmonies, and orchestral colors. The very form in which the physical space was arranged, the location of percussion instruments in front of the orchestra, describes a dispositional space for the performer's creative actions.

Figure 3: The performer interacts with body percussion on suspended instruments.

Finally, Viento y Mar materializes from a synergy of expressive languages creating symphonic landscapes. Its final form has eight sections: El Viento, Coral I, Amor Brujo, Coral II, Bodas de Sangre, Coral III, Danza del Fuego, and El Mar. The overture is an evocation of the wind with textures performed by the orchestra and percussive sounds. The work ends converging to a seaside path in which energy and rhythm fade out within the orchestraal sounds. Viento y Mar seeks a synthesis connecting the musical discourse with the Flamenco's gestures, energy, and percussion.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Viento y Mar was produced by the Center for Integration, Documentation, and Culture Diffusion (CIDDIC) of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). We are thankful to the Unicamp Symphony Orchestra and its conductor and musical director Dr. Cinthia Alireti for the partnership and the impressive world premiere. We also thank Marina Abreu for the scenic supervision, Victor Damiani for the recording and video edition. The UNICAMP’s Interdisciplinary Nucleus for Sound Studies (NICS) and the Institute of Arts also collaborate with the montage of the performance. The Brazilian agency the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), supports this artistic research under the project (#304431/2018) Musical Creation and Analysis integrated by Cognitive, Interactive and Multimodal Processes.

Figure 4: The performer interacts with a reddish coat such as it was a percussion instrument.

REFERENCES

1 Manzolli, J. (2015) Multimodal Generative Installations and the Creation of New Artform based on Interactive Narratives. In Proceedings of the 18th Generative Arts Conference, 2015, Venice, Italy. pages 32-44.
2 Manzolli, J. (2018) Multimodal Architecture of the Ode to Christus Hypercubes. In Proceedings of the 21st Generative Arts Conference, 2016, Verona, Italy. pages 252-266.
3 Manzolli, J. (2016) Descobertas: Creativity as Libretto of a Multimodal Opera. In Proceedings of the 19th Generative Arts Conference, 2016, Florence, Italy. pages 252-266.
4 Manzolli, J. (2016b). Video: (Trailer) https://youtu.be/zCRq9zVPLew (access: 22/06/2020).
5 Manzolli, J. (2016c). Video: (Full Work) https://youtu.be/bTqh313Dl-0 (access: 22/06/2020).
6 Gibson, J.J. 1986. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
7 Caruana, F. and Borghi, A.M. 2013. Embodied cognition: Una nuova psicologia. Giornale Italiano di Psicologia. Giornale Italiano di Psicologia.
 

JÔNATAS MANZOLLI - BIO NOTES

Jônatas Manzolli combines contemporary musical creation and cognitive sciences focusing on the dialogues between music and science. The interdisciplinary study results in electroacoustic, instrumental, and multimodal works. A composer and mathematician, full professor of the Institute of Arts, University of Campinas, Brazil, he is a pioneer in the Brazilian research in computer music. He has been a guest researcher at the Institute for Neuroinformatics, Switzerland, and the SPECS Group (SPECS) at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. He is also a collaborator of the CIRMMT, McGill University, Montreal.
Manzolli’s most notorious achievements have emphasized the delicate relationship between man and machine, including the use of artificial intelligence as digital interfaces such as Ada: Intelligent Space (2002) and the Multimodal Brain Orchestra (2009). His compositions also include large orchestral settings such as the multimodal opera Descobertas (2016). He has received numerous grants and awards including the recent Rockefeller Foundation “Arts & Literary Arts” Award to be an artist resident at the Bellagio Centre, Italy in April 2018.

FERNANDA VIEIRA - BIO NOTE

Fernanda Vieira's artistic trajectory is anchored in a dialogue between percussion, dance, and body expression. She has an MMUS in Percussion from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. She studied with the Brazilian percussionists Fernando Hashimoto (UNICAMP) and Elizabeth Del Grande of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP). Fernanda Vieira was a soloist percussionist in front of renowned orchestras from the São Paulo State and Rio de Janeiro. She also performed with chamber percussion ensembles in national and international festivals in the USA and Europe.
Fernanda Vieira is currently a percussionist of the Unicamp Symphony Orchestra (OSU) and develops artistic research in creative and collaborative performance based on the fusion of percussion with Flamenco dance.