SISTEMA
10 November 2019
Iklectik, London
12-15th July 2018
Teatro Municipal Baltazar Dias | Centro Cultural John dos Passos | Fórum Machico
Madeira Island
10 November 2019
Iklectik, London
12-15th July 2018
Teatro Municipal Baltazar Dias | Centro Cultural John dos Passos | Fórum Machico
Madeira Island
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If we think of a system as a group of cohesively interrelated elements, then, depending on the temporal and spatial framing, anything can be a system! These types of considerations have been a focal point in the culture of production, conception and critique of the New Maker Ensemble.
The concept of system served as the starting point for all works developed in this new music programme. The way we challenged the various creators, we now challenge you to think of systems: What are they made of? How are they created? How do they evolve? How are they part of us or us part of them? ... SISTEMA was produced with the support from Funchal City Council and the Portuguese Regional Cultural Bureau. |
images by Ilme Vysniauskaite at Iklectik
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images by Rui Camacho at Teatro Baltazar Dias
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A microscopic insight on whichever piece of common fabric opens up extremely complex and intricate worlds, which nevertheless are usually based on some form of binary language; not so different from the one computers are built upon.
This piece is the product of the translation of one of these universes into sound. From the binary language, there emerge patterns discernible to the naked eye - or to the rough ear - whose construction commands the wider changes in the harmonic structure. Despite that, the basic nature of the binary code gives the performance an apparent simplicity, which allows for a more contemplative appreciation. As if on a loom, the two performers enlace their arms meditatively on a sole keyboard, and weave - after the same structure - a new piece of fabric; a musical one this time. |
Sara Rodrigues (piano)
Rodrigo B. Camacho (piano) |
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"Examination of a Free Person" (2018)
by Barnaby Goodman premiere Western art music has gone through a long industrialisation process, especially strong during the last two centuries. Conservatoires began spread- ing across European capitals, advancing their standards for the international normalisation of culture.
There appear the ever more sophisticated curriculums, exams, classifications, certificates and diplomas. Culture becomes objectified, capitalised. A given reified musical language finds its grammar crystallised, serving as the perfect ideal - both in terms of form and content - frozen in time. Stuck in the absurdity of quantitative evaluation systems, without proper cultural memories and sensitivities, we ponder on what place can error and failure have today. Authenticity is terminally ill. |
Ragnar Árni Ólafsson (examiner)
Roxanna Albayati (cello) |
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Around Music (2006 / 18)
by Cecília Arditto adaptation Terms such as "absolute music", or "abstract music" can be seen as dialectical responses to major philosophical systems, which were influential in central Europe during the mid 19th century. Music - in these people's minds - should therefore be an art form, free and independent from everything else. It should only respond to its own laws and, for bearing an essentially pure and formally perfect nature, any produced discourse would prove incorruptible.
The interest of any musician subscribing to this thought ghetto, should, above all, in the abatement and suppression of any noise, sonic and visual, but also semantic and political. In the moment each piece finds itself realised, only that which most resembles the imagined formal ideal must survive! However, in each concert there always happens a number of things which are not music in those terms. People have solely learned how to ignore them. |
Marat Ingeldeev (piano)
Roxanna Albayati (cello) Rodrigo B. Camacho (percussion) Nicole Trotman (flute) Ragnar Árni Ólafsson (guitar) Sara Rodrigues (text projection) |
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It all starts as a blank slate. Silence. Stretched across the room, there are lines, visible and invisible, creating divisions. Before everyone's eyes, a structure is gradually built, in which, divided and subdivided, space merges into organised time.
Performers' gestures gradually respond choreographically to the ever changing nature of the space which contains them. Perhaps sparse, con- fined at times, the visual counterpoint of every silent gesture becomes music too. |
(movement / percussion)
Sara Rodrigues Nicole Trotman Marat Ingeldeev Roxanna Albayati Rodrigo B. Camacho Ragnar Árni Ólafsson |
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The machine asks the musician for sound, so, the musician offers it some. The machine receives it gladly for it needs it in order to do its job, which consists in spectrally analysing it, so that - allowed some creative freedom - the generation of a series of notes rapidly begins, inspired in the harmonic universe of the sound it captured.
The musician receives the message whilst its being produced in real time and promptly gets ready to interpret it. From this point onwards, all sound becomes more fuel to the computational fire. Eventually, human and machine become indistinguishable, as both execute a function, so necessary to prevent the cycle from breaking. Both sustain and develop it, simultaneously challenging it and raising the ever more intense performance levels. Could this be an old form of love? |
Marat Ingeldeev (piano)
Desmond Clarke (Pd patch) |
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Conceptual clarity constitutes this piece as a trans- parent structure, whose machinery we so precisely become able to understand. As the piece unfolds, we are granted access to its interior as much as we gain a vision into the very thought that brought it to life in first place.
Every time it is put to work, it explains itself whilst shedding light on the moment of its own conception. Akin to an instructions book, a text explains how a translation system was put to work, trans- forming that same text into musically organised sounds. |
Rodrigo B. Camacho (percussion and voice)
Roxanna Albayati (cello) |
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Four members of the group submitted them- selves to a longitudinal process of questioning un-sustainability, at global, national, local and private levels. The performance, assembled through a semi-emergent process, unraveled the systemic connections between subjects at play, ultimately revealing their multidimensionality.
Information is communicated on a scale of varying levels of clarity, potentially leading to different understandings or mis-understandings, sympathy or disregard. In this way, the audience is invited to re-examine the mechanisms by which they create meaning, and to formulate their own analysis and self-questioning on the subjects presented. It leaves us to question how we, our decisions, actions and intra-actions are all entangled in a complex globalised system. All things forcibly interdependent, micro and macro scales cease bearing clear divisions. |
with mixed media and projections
(voice / movement) Ragnar Árni Ólafsson (guitar) Nicole Trotman (flute) Rodrigo B. Camacho Sara Rodrigues |
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There are myriad ways to cause terror and so, plenty different forms of terrorism. There is terror- ism that cares for the technical quality of its own performance and is especially zealous in all that concerns aesthetic production. At the end of the day, there is always a message to be sent across, more or less spectacularly, in a quest for the widest possible audience.
Drop by drop, terror begins, as living within us, any "-ism" becomes aroused. It is the very flame, which devours our insides before any intolerable injustice, that shakes our agreeable stance, and washes from our minds any kind of decency. There boils our blood and through our head, a toast to nihilism is summoned in the most Russian of ways. |
with projections
(voice / movement) Roxanna Albayati (cello) Marat Ingeldeev (piano) Nicole Trotman Rodrigo B. Camacho Sara Rodrigues Ragnar Árni Ólafsson |
This project was supported by:
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