Output details

Extending Vocal Bodies into Audiovisual Media: B(earth) and Intimacies

This British Academy supported project responded to two key drivers.

Building on the supposition that extra-normal voice performance, or extended voice practice, is experienced not only on the sonic plane, but also on the tactile register, both literally and metaphorically, we asked:

• What issues arise when we experiment with “translating”, or extending, the tactile qualities of extra-normal vocal practice into visual media through collaborative practice with a visual artist?

• What are the problems, the creative opportunities, and the kinds of creative products opened up by creating works that are underpinned by these intentions?

We explored these questions in the following way:

Painter/ video artist/academic Ludivine Allegue and Yvon Bonenfant undertook the development of two collaborative artworks. These were:

• B(earth), an extended voice/painting/video installation: Bonenfant and Allegue undertook their compositional projects in the same room during an extended residency, developing a score for performance, painting and video that was subsequently made into an installation work;

• Intimacies, an extended voice/video-dance work during which Bonenfant and Allegue managed an improvisation workshop with a team of dancers based on a series of “touch-intentions” that underpinned the video capture, editing and sound recording processes.

Both the artistic products and the writings derived from the research shed light on the unusual qualities of collaborative process required to co-compose across extra –vocal sound, the tactile register and the visual register. They begin to open up a field that develops specific and unusual aesthetic vocabulary and artistic working methods for extended voice/visual outputs.

Aesthetic insights were disseminated via international showings of B(earth) and Intimacies, and were conjugated with the other insights during showings and lecture part of MMU’s Curating Knowledge PAR Gallery series; conference papers and hybrid PAR presentations including two invited symposia invitations at the Sorbonne and at Portsmouth University, and two peer-reviewed articles