ISTHEWAY.TV002 - Sara Bonaventura "Diapason"

from Shinoby

DVD

ISTHEWAY.TV002 - Sara Bonaventura "Diapason" main photo

Omar Contri aka Shinoby is back with a second audiovisual project with his label Istheway, this time in collaboration with the visual artist Sara Bonaventura, known for her experimental music videos, here processing a performance by Annamaria Ajmone, which has been screened in Manhattan Times Square ZAZ Gallery during the lockdown.
The piece, Diapason, will be released as very limited DVD edition, with an unreleased bonus version, a tribute to Donna Haraway’s A cyborg Manifesto.

DIAPASON
from: dia pasōn (khordōn) ‘through all’

Performer: Annamaria Ajmone
Sound design: Omar Contri
Processing: Sara Bonaventura

ABOUT THE PRE-RECORDED AND PROCESSED PERFORMANCE
The choreography was drafted around as series of minimal movements, drawing linear yet dynamic movements in the surrounding space, which seems constantly morphing, in an artificial non-space designed by machines, where the inside morphs into the outside and vice versa, where two is one, where “one is not enough and two are too many” (DH) The body of the performer is a node, in a state of estrangement within the self, but so capable of creating an engaging sense, outside of the self. Resonating and tuning with the space surrounding it.
ABOUT THE REAL TIME PROCESSING
The environment where this reenactment takes place is purely artificial, created with a wobulator, making tangible the exploration of boundaries and edges. “Figurations are performative images that can be inhabited. All language is figurative, that is. Made of tropes, constituted by bumps that make us swerve from literal-mindedness… imploded atoms or dense nodes that explode into the entire worlds of practice…” (DH)
The title Diapason recalls a sort of resonator; a wobulator, a portmanteau word of wobble and oscillator, a modified monitor first prototyped by Nam June Paik, has been used to process a new choreography, responding to pitches in the signal. The analog processing was possible through the support of Signal Culture, while in residence in their studios. Several vintage synthesizers were used, and in particular the legendary wobulator.

ABOUT THE SOUND DESIGN
The main oscillator's wave dances connected with the body. A cyborg voice strokes it. A melancholic loop refines it.
Composed in a live session using only hardware & pedals and synched in with a visceral textures of electronics, a visceral touch which is rare in so much contemporary solo synthesiser music.
The result is a beautifully restrained yet oddly emotive soundtrack.

ABOUT THE READING
Only as DVD bonus a special version with voice over reading Donna Haraway’s A cyborg Manifesto “The biggest threat to such power is interruption of communication. Any system breakdown is a function of stress”. (DH) We selected some significant excerpts from several chapters of the manifesto: An ironic dream of a common language for women in the integrated circuit, Fractured Identities, The Informatics of domination, Cyborgs: a myth of political identity.