February 12 2010, 8:30pm HTTP London, 21h30 Kawenga Montpellier

Telematic performance with Antye Greie from Hailuoto Finland, Pascale Gustin from Paris France, Maja Kalogera from Madrid Spain and Helen Varley Jamieson from Wellington New Zealand.

Sitting before webcams in different locations around the world, they performed a sound piece using a simple protocole. It was more an artistic experiment than a traditional musical performance. It's qualities lay in its fragility, in the necessary attention, in the gaps and in the performers humanity while negotiating their presence during the performance.

Protocole:

*Each performer chooses four objects :one red, one green, one yellow and one blue.

*Each performer will have an assigned color.

*A performer is invited to play, make sound, voice whenever her color will be visible in the shared image.

*The performers can change the object in front of their webcam at any time of the performance.

*The performers will only use their mothertongue.

AGF (Antye Greie), born and raised in East German is a singer,  digital songwriter, producer, performer, e-poet, calligrapher, digital media artist known for artistic exploration of digital technology through the deconstruction of language and communication within music and abstract sound poetry.

Helen Varley Jamieson is a writer, digital artist and theatre practitioner. Much of her work experiments with cyberformance - using the internet as a site for remote performers to collaborate in real time. At the moment, she is at home in New Zealand.

Maja Kalogera is an intermedia artist. Her projects encompass broad range of works including paintings, photography, performance, programming, networks and space.

Pascale Gustin : When I was five, I was breaking my toys to see what happened inside. Now I explore our technical and technological tools through multiple levels of language : breath, cries, letters, words, writing, algorithm... And what happens? I hope for a coming together of feelings and the concrete world. Maybe we can call that "digital poetry"...

Annie Abrahams was born to a farming family in a rural village in the Netherlands. She obtained a doctorate in biology and found that her observations of monkeys inspired curiosity about human interactions. She now is an artist working on the possibilities and limitations of computer mediated communication.

Huis Clos / No Exit - Jam has been created especially for the show If not you not me
in HTTP gallery London. A sound file of the performance is featured in the show till 20 March 2010.

Documentation:

screencapture by Antye of the performers-interface after the actual performance

Sound file of the performance (16 min)
screen capture of the performance (big mov file)

 

"this is a totally potential performance opportunity, very interesting" from Antye's blog post on this event

Collaborative improvisation from the void Helen's blog entry on furtherfield about this experience

(Réactif) de Pascale sur son blog

"All went well during the tests, some micro-hisses, but we managed to contain cache, browser and connection problems. Not now, sitting beside the projection in HTTP, watching my administration interface, I saw some images freeze, and the non frozen performers wait, as I did. "Never panic" was the motto and so we didn't. I started contacting and later guiding some of the performers by chat. Helen didn't have any return at all, she was as if deaf and blind, nevertheless we saw and heard her. Maja's connection failed completely after 5 minutes, so we lost her in the process.
The resulting sound file is amazingly good considering these circumstances. I like listening to it's quiet existence, the intimate quality of the evolving sound communication. Beyond technological fragility we managed to sustain a common space of sound interaction. The public in HTTP appreciated by applauding generously." Annie Abrahams after the performance.

Huis Clos / No Exit - Jam is part of the Huis Clos / No Exit artistic research project by Annie Abrahams