Artistic research, and with it the process of doing art and the artwork itself, are at the heart of this investigation. For that reason, I provide – as an augmented way of reading – this complementary website to my book TransCoding – From 'Highbrow Art' to Participatory Culture | Social Media – Art – Research published at [transcript], May 2018. Here I introduce the reader to the video and audio samples discussed within the monograph. Designed in a way that reflects the structure of this book, the site presents annotated audio and video excerpts of TransCoding’s artworks, interview passages and community contributions. The book could be read as text alone, but in my opinion the reader will derive more and gain a more holistic experience from listening in parallel to the additional audio and visual media made available. (Click here for the link to the monograph on "TransCoding" published at [transcript])
I have structured this website according to the main parts and chapters of the book. In the book each link to an artwork is accompanied by an indication in which of the badges below it can be found. For instance: 'Link to the video documentation of Slices of Life:
http://transcoding.info/english/book.html – PREFACE'. By clicking the badge with the same name ('PREFACE') a window opens that displays the annotated artwork indicated in the title.
PART I: TRANSCODING – FROM 'HIGHBROW ART' TO PARTICIPATORY CULTURE
Part I of the monograph consists of a general introduction to TransCoding in chapter 1; chapter 2 describes the research field and gives an overview of participatory art in the field of contemporary (classical) music and the project-specific methodology.
Part I is rounded off in chapter 3 by an interview of the TransCoding team that offers an overview of the project from the perspective of the cultural scientist Torsten Flüh. In his questions, he touches on the (crossover) aesthetics of TransCoding, the challenges of a digital society, social media in the arts and the creative process behind the project.
Page 3: The Artwork Slices of Life for violin, soundtrack and video.
A central artwork was the multimedia show Slices of Life for violin, soundtrack and video. It was created by me as the lead artist, and it incorporates community contributions in the form of texts, images, sounds, and voice recordings for which we called via calls for entry.
Page 20, 52 and 62: What if we had wings? for violin, soundtrack and text-based video.
What if we had wings? the first composition developed in the framework of TransCoding, includes text contributions of our community members. The texts given to us were answers to a prompt on visions and dreams on what-ifblog.net. The video shows excerpts from the live performance on 26.9.2014 at the European Researchers Night in Vienna.
Page 24: Slices of Life – The Shirt for violin, soundtrack and video.
The Shirt is the introductory sequence of Slices of Life. It tells the story of a person who is in search of his or her own identity; it could be a woman or it could be a man. She borrows other people’s clothes and wears them for some time because – I’m quoting the story – “She feels she doesn’t have any specific identity herself, and therefore she likes the idea of wearing other people’s clothes so that she could (in some way) step into their identity and discover what it might be like to be them.”
The material for the video (from 2:30 on), stills and movie clips, stem from the series "e m o ׀ t i ׀ o ׀ n a l" by Katarina Michelitsch.
PART II: FROM LONELY GENIUS TO COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION – WHOSE VOICE MATTERS?
Part II is concerned with theories and concepts related to participative art and the theoretical framework for our social media and content strategies.
In chapter 4, I define participatory culture via web 2.0 in the context of our project. In chapter 5, I look into the social media content strategies that furthered and unlocked the creativity of the community for mutual benefit. In chapter 6, I recount the production of the artwork and the problems that arose out of the participatory character. Chapter 7 discusses the motivation for participation that let people contribute to the artwork of TransCoding. In chapter 8, which is dedicated to the community of TransCoding, I document selected community contributions and reflect on them. Chapter 9 (‘A Potential for Change’) deals with the impact of the community on the role and the self-concept of the artist.
Page 59: The Video Lia scored by Christian Schwind and Marco Pietrolungo
The challenge Who is Damian, Lia and Barbara…? (May 15, 2014), which we launched on YouTube, was quite ambitious. It demanded not only artistic skills but at the same time technical knowledge to score the videos and handle the downloads and uploads on YouTube. Also, participants needed to have their own YouTube channel to be able to participate.
The composer Christian Schwind writes about his scoring: "Sound portrait about the woman you see in the video. This musical interpretation of her character emerged by looking at the video and editing, the way she was filmed, the way she dressed and presented herself and not knowing anything about the real Lia." (Christian Schwind, May 8, 2014 published on YouTube)
The interpretation of Marco Pietrolungo:
Page 65: Souvenir de Budapest
Souvenir de Budapest was inspired by a contribution of Ineta Svärd to our question "What get's your creativity going?". Ineta scored a video she had made of the island Fårö, "Just a sample for whistle and piano. My answer to her contribution was this little souvenir from Budapest. I took the original material for this video with my smartphone during a Ferris wheel ride and on a boat on the river Danube.
Page 65: They speak in layered...
They speak in layered... for violin, soundtrack and video was inspired by the travelling artist Monique Besten's contribution to our question "What gets your creativity going?". She introduced me to her "exercise in being here: 711 steps", in which she describes discoveries on the end of a walk of 711 steps from her own house. Following her instructions, I left my Viennese flat and walked 711 steps to find a wall with beautiful graffiti that inspired me to They speak in layered....
Page 65: The Artwork The Gods Envy Us for violin, soundtrack and video.The Gods Envy Us was first inspired by a Facebook post of Sara Mn, who posted the following text allegedly said by Achilles: "I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again". It fit not only the topic but also the expressiveness of the contributions we had got in answer to our "Call for Entries | Catrina" on occasion of the Mexican festival "Día de los muertos" (Day of the Dead).
Page 65: Mad Maddy for violin, synthesizer and sound samples.
With Mad Maddy I tried to connect to the community via crossover aesthetics. I chose analogue synthesizers as main source for the soundtrack and made use of free percussion sound samples that were distributed open source on the internet. When I asked the community about who they thought Mad Maddy was, community member Amanda commented "Here’s my thoughts, Mad Maddie, is a computer geek from San Francisco". Mad Maddie was later integrated in the sound track of The Shirt.Page 65: Soundwaves for electric violin, acoustic violins and synthesizer (2013)
Soundwaves was a forerunner for Mad Maddy in the sense that I experimented for the first time with analogue synthesizers and combined this sonic world with the electric violin.
Page 67: Recording of Subsection 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms read by Monika Zyla (in Polish language).
Some community members decided to explicitly make a political statement in answering our call to read and record Subsection 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as we were working at a time of political upheaval about human rights in general and refugee movements in particular. Polish musicologist Monika Zyla for instance, a zealous protester for human rights and political freedom in Poland, translated the particular paragraph into Polish and sent us her personal recording. I integrated Julien Charest's beautiful Canadian French recording into Slices of Life, and Anthony Green, a human rights activist and artist, mailed us a recording with an artistic twist which served as the rhythmic basis for the final section of Slices of Life, Charter of Rights and Freedom.
Page 67: Recording of Subsection 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms read by Anthony Green (in English language).
Page 67: Recording of Subsection 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms read by Julien Charest (in French language).
Slices of Life –Charter of Rights and Freedoms The 7th and last movement of the multimedia show "Slices of Life" incorporates contributions of the community of what-ifblog.net in the form of texts, images, sounds, and voice recordings.
Page 67: Read me in the personalised version for Gloria Guns
Often our first impression of a person leads us to believe that we can grasp who this person is. It seems clear and obvious. Yet the closer we get acquainted, more and more complexities about this same person are revealed. In the installation Read me, the closeness of the relationship will be expressed through the distance of an audience member to the projection. The further away one is, the clearer the material will be (at its limit, one soundtrack and one sentence visible on the projection). The closer we get, the more complex and layered the material will become. The audio and the visual content of "Read me" will reflect the complexity of our impressions of a person. The proximity of an onlooker will be measured via an ultrasound sensor and translated to the audio and text projection by an "Open Frameworks" software patch and Arduino.
For this version of Read me, Gloria Guns, a human rights lawyer of Korean parentage, chose subsection 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom and the lyrics of a song that expressed "a certain sense of isolation and alienation, stemmed by a longing for more beautiful deeper meaning." (Gloria). The material I used for the composition derives from Gloria's contribution to our call for drones on the SoundCloud channel of TransCoding. One can hear her own voice singing a Korean lullaby and various recordings of fans she incorporated in her drone for us. To express the alienation and isolation she feels when thinking about the text of her chosen song I combined her material with isolated fragments of a baroque aria.
Page 67: Fan Death by Gloria Guns
Gloria Guns writes about her remix contribution Fan Death which she composed on occasion of the "Call for Entries: Drone Remix Contest":There is a persistent belief among Koreans that it is dangerous to leave a fan on while you sleep, because it might suffocate you. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall back asleep, and all I can hear is the evil hum of the fan. Composed as part of the Drone Remix project run by What If? (www.facebook.com/events/1621294274814993/), using several of their crickets and Gran Cassa samples, along with all of the fans in my house. Also featuring an old Korean lullaby, which translates roughly to:"hush, hush, dear baby, you sleep so soundly...(Gloria Guns, on her personal soundcloud channel, 2016"Slices of Life – Korean Lullaby Gloria’s participation in the project was especially successful since not only did she produce an artwork that she found satisfying and was featured in her personalised audiovisual installation Read me, but her soundtrack and choice of text also found its way into a segment of the overall artwork: Slices of Life – Korean Lullaby.
Page 85: the madness of the night and the woven stars by Feliz Anne Reyes Macahis.
the madness of the night and the woven stars is part of Feliz Anne Reyes Macahis' contribution to the "Call for Entries – #GYHAYFY" (#GiveYourselfAHolidayAwayFrom Yourself) for which our community members invented fictive personalities and described their characters, living situations and personal likes and dislikes. Feliz' character Tala sketches drawings and loves music.
Page 87: Slices of Life – Johnny
The story of Johnny was Susanne Wosnitzka's contribution to the "Call for Entries – #GYHAYFY" (#GiveYourselfAHolidayAwayFrom Yourself). Johnny tells us the fictive story of a Lesbian couple. I scored the narration, made a video and included it into Slices of Life. The author and contributor Susanne Wosnitzka lent me her voice for a fictional telephone interview.
Page 87:My Chosen Name Is...
With the composition My Chosen Name Is... I featured six Mini-GYHAFYs that people gifted to me on Facebook. Later in the project the composition became part of Slices of Life
.Page 88: What if? Free Sound Sample by Denim Szram.
During the runtime of TransCoding we initiated three calls for sound in total. Just before New Year 2016, we asked for submissions of downloadable sound samples as a ‘holiday’ gift to our community to celebrate the impending New Year. In response to this call alone, we received forty-one submissions from our twenty-seven group members. Amongst them was the free sound sample gifted to our community by Denim Szram.Page 88:Soundscape 1 by Laura Feathers aka Magic Sun.
Instead of contributing a simple sound sample, Laura Feather composed a soundscape of four minutes length.
Page 93: Read me in the personalised version for Alina Murzakhanova (October 2015)
Alina was one of the community members who got a personalised version of the audiovisual installation Read me. When I met Alina, she talked about art and life and we exchanged experiences of what it is like to live in a foreign country. Living abroad sometimes reminded her of the world of the famous story of Alice in Wonderland: the grotesqueness of situations, the fractures in everyday life that come from being a foreigner, the uncertainty of right or wrong, those are questions she felt she was confronted with while living among people of another country. For her the text by Lewis Caroll encapsulated all this, and she chose it as the basis for her personalised version of the audiovisual installation Read me.
In the soundtrack for her installation, the clear ringing of Asian bells express the dreaminess of Alina’s world, claves capture her determination in life, and sounds of an old, broken accordion transport us right into the middle of her version of her own personal wonderland. I derived all the sound material for Alina’s soundtrack from TransCoding’s SoundCloud.
Click here for a playlist of all versions of the audiovisual installation Read me.
The section Who Am I? in Slices of Life was inspired by Alina Murzakhanova's choice of text, a fragment of Alice in Wonderland. Hali Rey's beautiful contribution to our 'call for shelfies' became the backdrop for the corresponding video.
Page 101: Read me in the personalised version for the composer and musician Ricardo Tovar Mateus.
When Ricardo saw the prototype of Read me at the arts event "Schmiede Hallein" in September 2015, he was immediately intrigued by the concept. He started to think of his own version, which was not only to include his choice of image and text material but, he also wanted to compose his own soundtrack. Ricardo was inspired by philosophical texts by Slavoy Zizek, Michael Hardt, Gabriel García Márquez which circle around civil disobedience, thoughts about the purpose of our existence, love, negligence, discipline and anger. His music contrasts the fractions in the meaning of the texts by adding a contemplative and trancelike layer.
Page 109: Portrait of Maria (listening with headphones recommended because of low bass frequencies).
I composed Maria – a Portrait for Maria's personalised installation of Read me. Maria described herself as rhythmic and active, but at the same time as soft and melancholic. In this soundtrack you can hear her voice and her playing the djembe. She chose two texts to inspire me. One was about life having a rhythm, constantly moving. And the other one was a poem by Hermann Hesse about wisdom which is not to be found in books. You may find it within yourself.
PART III: TRANSCODING – FROM 'HIGHBROW ART' TO PARTICIPATORY CULTURE
Part III (‘Artistic Research – New Insights Through Arts Practice?’) offers a comparison of discourses in the fields of ethnographic sociology and artistic research. We deploy here the philosophical paradigm of Foucauldian discourse analysis. I discuss with the sociologist Kai Ginkel, co-author of the chapter, the similarities and differences in the methodologies of artistic research and ethnography.
We compare the overall production of knowledge, point out similarities and differences, and search for the values, taboos and power strategies behind methods and approaches (chapter 10). We present and analyse the case study I am a Priest, a movement from the artwork Slices of Life, from the perspective of each fields. Here, we investigated how a method has bearing on the ‘truth’ that is being sought and how it is accordingly depicted (chapter 11). Finally, we evaluate whether both disciplines might possibly inform each other in terms of methodological innovation and enhancement (chapter 12).
Page 134: Excerpt of Toque A Eshu Y Ochosi by Louis Aguirre for singing violinist
Excerpt of Toque A Eshu Y Ochosi for singing violinist by the Cuban composer Louis Aguirre, performed by Barbara Lüneburg at Ultraschallfestival Berlin 2016 (live recording). "But you, divine being, you who sang to the end..." (R.M.Rilke)
Page 140: Slices of Life – I Am a Priest by Louis Aguirre for singing violinist
A man from Cuba tells us about his gods. He is a priest – as everybody can be a priest – in his religion Santería.
Example for the use of lining out in I Am a Priest
Powerful repeated violin motifs that first present and later answer the line of the Santería priest in a ritualistic form of call and response (the so-called ‘lining out’ that is common to both Santería and Christian rites) serve me as an artistic means to express Santería worship.
Sound sample 1: use of expanded techniques in I Am a Priest
I apply brittle tones, as well as sul ponticello techniques that touch on the overtone series and then abandon it again, and noisy, cracking scratchy sounds. Nothing is absolutely clear, nothing is entirely in focus, the sonoric qualities waver.
Sound sample 2: use of expanded techniques in I Am a Priest
I proceed similarly when Aguirre mentions that “everyone is the son of some god” and then lists the name of some of his gods: the violin prepares and highlights the textual enumeration through several bowed Es that flicker through timbres, maintaining variety and securing the interest of the listener, adding brightness and resplendence and, in general, serve as a plateau of concentration.
Sound sample 3: Example for the use of the ritualistic bass drum in I Am a Priest
I further underscore the topic of spirituality by using a huge resonating bass drum in the background that adds a steady, ritualistic beat. (It is recommended to listen with head phones.)
Sound sample 4: use of rhythmic sound samples taken from the world of popular culture in I Am a Priest
I musically address the community of TransCoding by including electronically produced rhythm samples that are associated with popular culture rather than classical music thus alluding to their assumed (musical) identity.
Sound sample 5: use of rhythm sound samples taken from the world of popular culture that mix with the features of Santería practice
Later in the piece I merge these samples with the percussion instruments of Santería.
Song by Māori Huinga
A spiritual song by Huinga, a Māori, who told us many stories about this landscape and about its people. He and I stood on top of Cape Reinga looking across the vast sea, when he sang this song for me.
The artworks and this monograph would not exist without TransCoding’s community.
I would like to thank all our active and passive supporters; by name, I am grateful to Louis Aguirre, Victor Barceló, Monique Besten, Julien Charest, Tamara Friebel, Gloria Guns, Anthony Green, Camilla Hoitenga, Olivia Kieffer, LIA, Feliz Anne Reyes Macahis, Daniela Michelle, Katarina Michelitsch, Sara Mn, Anahit Mughnetsyan, Alina Murzakhanova, Paul Norman, Heghine Ohanyan, Mikolaj Pociecha, Alexandra Radoulova, Hali Rey, Damian Stewart, Felix Christian Thiessen, Ricardo Mateus Tovar, Sabina Ulubeanu, Isabelle Vigier, Michael Wolters, Susanne Wosnitzka, and my students in the seminar ‘Undoing Gender’ from the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and Karl Franzens University of Graz, who all contributed with voice, sound, image or word to the artworks of TransCoding.
Contact: Prof. Dr.phil. Barbara Lüneburg Email: barbara.lueneburg@kug.ac.at