Affect Formations concert video now released
by Adinda van 't Klooster
All good things come to an end and so the same with the residency at Durham University. My lovely studio overlooking the river has been reclaimed but the very productive residency has now been fully documented on this website for posterity to enjoy. A full HD video of the Sage concert is now also available online at https://youtu.be/qZmdpDISdUQ, thanks to Simone Tarsitani for all his hard work on the edit and filming. For those who didn't make the concert, I hope you enjoy watching it!
To summarise, the residency led to the creation and completion of two interactive audiovisual interfaces exploring emotion in music and art, titled 'In a State' https://www.affectformations.net/projects/in-a-state and 'BioCombat' https://www.affectformations.net/projects/biocombat. A second strand of work consisted of the creation of a series of graphical scores, https://www.affectformations.net/projects/graphical-scores, some of which were performed live in the two public performances at the Sage and Durham University (see YouTube video link above). The concerts would not have been possible without the excellent piano performance of John Snijders and Nick Collins. Thanks also to Janet Stewart for leading the panel discussion after the concert and to Tuomas Eerola for participating in the discussion. I think the concert was enjoyed by those who came. I deduct this from the audience feedback we received; you find some examples pasted below:
" The music was very powerful and effected the emotions I felt throughout the performance. I was intrigued by Biocombat and how the emotions can be triggered."
" Well structured and varied. Enjoyed very much. Original. Enjoyed the debate too."
"A very good interesting evening. Well organised and produced - avant-garde is still alive!"
" I very much liked the completely different interpretations of the graphical scores from the two pianists."
"I thought it was interesting to see how the animations gave me a different experience of a performance. The animations were engaging but did not detract from my enjoyment of the improvising."
Another output of the residency has been the online graphical research survey that has sofar been taken by 48 people. We need at least two more people to take the survey before we can release the data, so the survey is still open for people who did not attend the concert. If you feel generous please spend ten minutes of your time looking at drawings and assessing them for their emotional expression here: https://www.affectformations.net/research/visualaffects.
Asides from allowing me to make a new body of work, the residency has been an excellent opportunity to work with music professionals of a very high callibre and to make new links for further collaborations. I am most grateful to the Arts Council England, the Leverhulme Trust and to Durham University for making this possible.
