Music and Video – Writing Challenges
Published in Bloc-Note 321 – GRAME – Lyon – May 2013
More and more frequently, composers are integrating the image into their writing and project design. One can think of composers such as Thierry de Mey, who is also a filmmaker, or Samuel Sighicelli, who is as much a “maker” of images as of sounds. These pages of Bloc-Note have echoed this trend on several occasions. For Pierre Jodlowski, visual material is present in many creations for the concert hall or the stage; Grame concerts have presented works such as Time & Money and In & Out, where musical and video writing are closely interwoven. In Le Royaume d’en bas, a co-production by Grame and éOle, the video image defines the architecture of the piece in its scenographic and dramaturgical dimensions. The French premiere of Hyperspeed Disconnected Motions for contrabass flutes, electronics, and video, written for the Petrini–Junger duo and presented on Thursday, March 14, 2013 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance (Grame Days), represents a further milestone in this transdisciplinary journey. And one could multiply the examples within Pierre Jodlowski’s catalogue. What is the common thread? What is its necessity? The composer answers us.
All of the works presented below share a common point: they explore, within the compositional process, the integration of video. Without claiming the definition of a fully autonomous language, these pieces nevertheless seek to question the complementarity of modes of expression within a dynamic of renewal of the musical approach. This attraction to the image, beyond perhaps constituting a natural reflex, is intimately linked to the work of adapting the music for Eisenstein’s film Strike, which I carried out between 1999 and 2000 following a commission from the Cinémathèque de Toulouse. In this project, which occupied me for nearly two years, I continually studied the work of this genius filmmaker, particularly his very singular vision of the question of montage. I can say, many years later, that the influence of Eisenstein’s theoretical writings (notably the theory of attractions) continues to operate within me in the development of the temporal and spatial forms of my projects.
1. Berlin Random Memories (2001 / 65 min.)
Commissioned by the Academy of Arts of Berlin – Triptych composed of Mixtion for saxophone, video, and electronics; N,N,N, a piece with video and sensors; and Is it this? for violin, bass clarinet, percussion, and an interactive audiovisual setup. This work constitutes my first musical realization integrating video. The notion of spectacle is its primary motivation, with a view toward a global conception of the performance space that goes beyond the strict framework of the concert. The writing of the video proceeds, on the one hand, from a documentary approach (images shot in Berlin, the city being the main subject of the project), from a process of symbolic representation (computer-generated images produced in collaboration with visual artist Vincent Meyer), and, in the final part, from the implementation of a real-time video generation system (essentially based on text whose parameters and content are closely linked to the musicians’ playing). The video material here is relatively disparate, but it offers a field of expression that makes it possible to “desacralize” the concert and place the performers in a situation that becomes theatrical.
2. in & out (2004 / 12 min.)
Commissioned by the KNM ensemble – Berlin, duo for violin, video cello, and sound track.
In this project, video is treated as a dreamlike extension of the physical space. The two musicians, positioned on either side of the screen, are gradually integrated as “subjects” within the images. This fairly conventional technique of doubling makes it possible to unify the fields of expression without ambiguity (at least on a semantic level). The aim here is not to weave parallel discourses that might generate a “poly-perceptive” meaning, but rather to conceive the whole as a single organic structure. The video material, aside from a few inserts of a graphic or even decorative nature, is essentially based on close-ups of the musicians—more precisely, of the instruments themselves. The image, in a sense, becomes an orchestration of the body within an expanded performance space.
3. Labyrinth (2003 / 16 min.)
Commissioned by the éOle studio, a videographic work in collaboration with Alain Josseau.
Composing for or with video does not necessarily mean being its author. One response to this question consists in entrusting the realization of the visual project to an artist, while remaining sufficiently close to the conception phase to share its stakes. Prior to the production of Labyrinth, Alain Josseau and I engaged in lengthy discussions about the objectives of the project. While leaving the visual artist the necessary room for maneuver, I wished for musical paradigms to be taken into account and for us to jointly establish typologies of temporal states, intimately linked to musical thought: notions of tempo, rhythmic behavior, density, etc. The video editing, although autonomous in its visual content, takes these issues into account and thus acquires a singular character.
4. People / Time (2003 / 20 min.)
Commissioned by the Donaueschingen Festival, in collaboration with Pascal Baltazar.
This piece critically examines the relationship to time in contemporary society—a relationship to time that conditions human relations in an increasingly superficial state, a sign of the communicational counter-utopia of modern societies. The unity of the video sequences is essentially based on this relationship to time: a leaf filmed over three months as it decomposes (shown here, of course, in accelerated form), watches that dance and come to life to the rhythms of the instruments, faces that express themselves only through jerks and looping phenomena… There is here an obsession, even a contamination of temporal reflection in the writing of the images. The videographic space, totally synchronized with the musical actions, once again sheds any autonomous content in favor of a mixed writing in which it becomes difficult to know whether music or images control the other.
5. Time and Money (2006 / 17 min.)
Commissioned by the GRM.
Closely linked to People / Time in terms of subject matter, this work approaches the relationship to video in a radically different way. First of all, because the image sequences are conceived here as separate spaces, a kind of interlude. With the exception of the ending, the performer is not in dialogue with the image, which therefore marks out an autonomous territory. The four videos that punctuate the work are created using computer-generated imagery, and the starting point consisted in modeling a one-euro coin, which becomes a space that is both plastic and semantic. This coin refers us to the notion of a material object that embodies money in a totally arbitrary way. What is a coin? An object that is at once completely devoid of meaning and value, and at the same time the essential atom of the capitalist structure of our societies. By making this coin dance in an empty space, transforming it into a cloud of numbers that accumulate, explode, and then collapse, the images seek here to extend the field of reflection beyond what music alone can achieve.
6. Respire (2008 / 14 min.)
Commissioned by the Integra Festival, a European project.
In Respire, the subject is the body—more precisely, one of its essential organic movements: breathing (this work is part of a cycle entitled Respire, Eat, Sleep). The videographic work here addresses the staging of bodies (a team of ten dancers). But from the very conception, it is the music that defines the visual actions: we film bellies breathing, but the bellies follow a score written beforehand. This notion of a score replaces the usual screenplay and gives the images their singular character. We certainly see bodies moving, breathing, dancing, but the movements are entirely controlled by a structural way of thinking and a development process that is wholly musical. Another dimension characterizes this project (created in collaboration with visual artist David Coste): the questioning of an undefined space (total whiteness). The bodies, already organized in their movements—indeed constrained by rhythmic writing—are moreover trapped in a boundless world, without limits or reference points. The metaphor is that of our world, where under the pretense of belonging to collective movements, we move forward as individual entities, increasingly alone.
7. The Kingdom of Beneath (2010 / 60 min.)
Co-production GRAME – éOle.
This stage project, developed in close collaboration with visual artist David Coste and scenographer Christophe Bergon, is conceived as a space of multiple meanings. The image, the music, as well as the texts and the actions of bodies on stage, are all vectors organized around a guiding idea: the loss of knowledge. Deeply philosophical in that it questions the paradox of the over-mediatized society that is ours, the work unfolds autonomous fields that act in counterpoint and generate a complex, sometimes esoteric perception. The image, approached here through a scenario parallel to the musical discourse, is constructed around symbolic states: urban wandering, a journey through a dark forest, an endless fall, the crackling of an image that plays with its own emptiness. The large screen is a moving canvas, a place where our gaze is inscribed upon the world as the musical energy advances. It is almost a kind of mental set, a counter-shot that suggests and works on the mind. Formally unified and aligned at the level of rhythmic trajectories, sounds and images nonetheless constitute here two distinct frameworks of a complex expression whose states and stakes are impossible to fully grasp. This approach runs counter to a Hollywood-style unification of sound and image, which increasingly defines an impoverished framework of the image–sound relationship…
8. L’aire du dire (2011 / 60 min.)
Commissioned by the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse.
The integration of video in this project is both very simple and conceptual: a screen, in the shape of a family medallion, rises and falls at regular intervals, and on it we see, in close-up and with eyes closed, an individual delivering the prose of Christophe Tarkos. These are in fact interlude sequences that mark the transitions between the main sections of this opera. But beyond this formal function, the use of video in place of an actor who might otherwise speak these texts makes it possible to open up another space, another time. The treatment of the image, in sepia tones and with a damaged film texture, refers to memory and to the past. This chronological ambiguity generates a kind of perceptual escape, like a window opened onto a diffuse time that cannot rejoin the present of the performance. The image, through its power of attraction, allows us here to look elsewhere, to mentally leave the theater, like a succession of possible endings… or beginnings…
9. Hyperspeed disconnected motions (2012 / 17 min.)
Commissioned by the EMS studio – Stockholm, and the Warsaw Autumn Festival.
Here we find a setup very close to that of In & out, with two musicians on stage (Paetzold flute and contrabass flute), positioned on either side of the projection screen. But whereas in In & out the aim was to multiply the instrumental gesture within the video, the focus here is on a narrative—or rather a wandering—through a “hyper-fast” world, sometimes absurd and not devoid of humor. The video functions as a diary, that of a period of life marked by incessant travel, a race against time… We therefore find text and highly edited images, organized in the form of short sequences, chapters, which reveal the author’s possible interrogations about a society that no longer takes the time. Somewhat obsessive subjects, yet deeply rooted in an alarming reality: time passing, speed, urgency, and our need for self-surpassing, which lead to situations in which we lose our grip on our own consciousness. Here, it is the energy and editing of the images that define the stage action—and thus the musical writing—in a search for identity, and therefore for rivalry between the media.
Texts by Pierre Jodłowski compiled by James Giroudon
Music page editor: James Giroudon – Grame, National Center for Musical Creation
