HONEYMOON IN POMPEII - work in progress
(2021)
author(s): Sven Vinge
published in: International Center for Knowledge in the Arts (Denmark)
“HONEYMOON IN POMPEII – work-in-progress” is an artistic research project conducted at the National Film School of Denmark. In it, I explore transmediality through the production of a prototype artwork spanning film, literary text, sculpture, and virtual reality all loosely inspired by the archeological technique used to cast the Pompeian victims of the Vesuvius eruption in 79 ad.
I describe my initial inspiration and how I changed my intentions of exploring a consistent storyworld to more abstract associations and themes and the different collaborative efforts in producing the four parts of the prototype (a test not meant for public exhibition). The prototype ended up consisting of:
1) A film representing a foot specialist helping a costumer try running shoes in a sports store but showing an obsessive interest in her feet and crossing her personal boundaries.
2) A literary text consisting of selected passages of Wilhelm Jensen’s short novel “Gradiva” (1902) translated to Danish in which we meet the young archeologist Norbert Hanold and notice his obsession with an ancient bas-relief portraying a young woman walking.
3) A sculpture consisting of four transparent plastic reliefs depicting a walking woman (copies of the bas-relief described in the novel) suspended in a 1x2x2 meter aluminum frame.
4) An erotic virtual reality experience in which the perceiver’s bodily movements affects the virtual world. When moving, the represented scene freezes and vice versa.
We conducted a test of the joint transmedia artwork with a small group of respondents who answered a questionnaire reflecting on their experience. I reflect on the respondent’s answers and propose further questions and themes that may be interesting to explore through artistic research: How does one explore transmediality not necessarily in relation to a consistent storyworld but also relying on abstract characteristics? What are the limits (if any) between mixed media art, transmedia art, and installation art? How can transmediality be explored as either a goal in itself or as a development tool for artists working with particular media in mind? Could it be beneficial to explore transmediality through the metaphor of archeology and how?
The 'harpe organisée', 1720-1840 : rediscovering the lost pedal techniques on harps with a single-action pedal mechanism
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Maria Cleary
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
While preparing for a concert in 2014, I, Maria Cleary, found certain passages impossible to play in Louis Spohr’s Opp. 115 and 118. I consulted Backofen’s methods for harp, where I knew that he had written about double-pedalling.
I explored all aspects of pedalling on the single-action harp. The research extended across five historical areas of research: treatises and methods, musical sources where a special solution is written by the composer/publisher, scores with no instructions but where multi-pedalling is implied by the music, historical shoes, and finally images of harpists pedalling.
To play Spohr’s music, the harpist uses the heel and toe independently and over thirty-seven complex moves are part of his music. When a pedal is folded or unfolded during a piece, Spohr writes at least one bar’s rest for the harpist.
Historical pedalling employs the whole foot, completely off the floor, where most pedals are not fixed. Pedals were moved at the moment where an accidental is written in the music and then released. Pedal markings are unnecessary, as pedalling becomes an inherent part of the musical gesture. The physicality of pedalling creates tensions and resolutions that mirror the musical line.