Production, Performance, Installation [PIP]

Faculty: Michael Oatman

PIP is sponsored by the Marcia and Chris Jaffe ’49 Program for Interdisciplinary Projects, which supports projects to be developed between the Schools of Architecture and Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Rensselaer. Founded by Chris Jaffe to support student productions and arts projects at Rensselaer, the Foundation is dedicated in the memory of Marcia Jaffe.

I went to the movies, and I saw a dog thirty feet high.
And this dog was made entirely of light.
And he filled up the whole screen.
-Laurie Anderson, from the song Walk the Dog, 1984

O people that I know
All I need is to hear the sound of their footsteps
To be able to tell forever the direction they have taken.
-Apollinaire, Cortege

The way we use audio makes you much more aware of your own body, and makes you much more aware of your place within the world, of your body as a “real” construction. What is reality and authenticity if not that?
-Janet Cardiff, 2002

Architecture is ‘frozen music’ …Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
-Attributed, variously, to Steve Martin, Martin Mull, Elvis Costello, 1980s

Square dance?
-Laurie Anderson, in response to the above quote

Introduction/Course Description

PIP (Production, Installation, Performance) is a course that has been reestablished at RPI through the generosity of Chris Jaffe, one of the world’s leading acousticians*. It was taught in the late 90s/early 2000s, and the latest incarnation takes a similar format: to pair an ARCH professor with an ARTS colleague and their students in a studio/lab/seminar situation. The mandate is to work with an invited sound or performing artist to design, test and build a deployable “performance architecture” in one semester, for performance in the following semester. The original language is as follows:

An interdisciplinary Arts and Architecture Educational Opportunity grounded in the project of creating a time-based art in physical dimension and space. The performance design concept and its development shall be considered a commissioning: of a unique production based on the premise that performance: movement, sound and its situation: place, set, props be integral – in the design and execution of the commissioned piece. It is expected that in the course of one semester the project be schemed, developed, constructed and performed at a premiere event in association with Rensselaer. The space(s) for the development and performance of the work will be determined by the faculty and deans of the respective schools.

The PIP visiting artist for spring ’10 was Francisco Lopez, a Spanish citizen living and working in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He is a highly regarded composer, software developer, writer and performing artist. His work can be found at franciscolopez.com. Our collaboration resulted in the production and deployment of “Blindfield”, a 100 panel, 64 speaker installation for an original Lopez work, “Blindfield”

The ARTS/ARCH co-teachers for PIP fall 2011 are, respectively, Shawn Lawson and Michael Oatman. Shawn is a media artist and programmer. He also collaborates with the artist Wafa Bilal in the art collective Crudeoils. Michael is an artist working site-specifically in installation, large format collages and video production. His Falling Anvil Studios is a collaborative entity working with other artists, designers and scientists and student inters from RPI, The College of Saint Rose, The University at Albany, Sage JCA and Skidmore.

Overview

How much of what we hear depends on what we see? How much of what we see depends on what we hear? What happens when the site (sight) of these aural events is translated via technology? What happens when the acoustic impression of space is delayed, via recording, processing and playback? Still, there is immediacy in the perceptual process that tells your brain, “this is happening now, because I’m hearing it now.”

Beyond model making in all its forms and media, we will use physical material as a way to limn not only the traditional space-describing capabilities of “material”, but to ask: can one experience a “delay” of audio perception due to the arrangement and deployment of materials? What about an asynchronous, (or delayed or ANTICIPATED) sound/space/movement overlap?

This studio will engage ideas of displacement, alienation, the uncanny, defamiliarization, and blur boundaries between material/sound, audience/performer, architecture/performance; we will explore the relationships between the quotidian aural phenomena of the world, recorded “live” and processed sound, the built environment, and the body (performer and observer).