Warszawskie Studio Eksperymentu
The curator of the first instalment of Warszawskie Studio Eksperymentu is Marek Chołoniewski, who has invited Chris Cutler and Piotr Madej to collaborate. The artists will present a project called FoMaTi.
Folded Maps of Time (FoMaTi) is an immersive audiovisual work combining biosensory electromagnetic systems (MC) with electrified object percussion (CC). The audience will be surrounded by a multichannel audiovisual system, as if they were inside a living organism or a virtual brain, with numerous inlets and outlets, channels and an infinite number of chaotic connections: these are our complex maps of time; the flow of uncertain memories, their unceasing stream. Brain activity will be projected onto a virtual model floating in a collage of graphics, photographs, black-and-white films and images generated in real time, at both macro- and micro-scale. The multichannel sound projection will define an analogue internal brain as one of the core elements of the instrument set, since biofeedback plays an important role at every level of the performance: selected brain waves (delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma, meditation, attention, raw data) are used both as readers and as processors of the artists’ behaviour, mediating between the unconscious and the intuitive selection of pre-composed and pre-performed materials. In opposition to intuition stands purposefulness — while sounds and images driven by brain waves are interpreted and interwoven in real time with consciously generated sounds by the second performer using electronically amplified and spatialised percussion, the whole organically — or perhaps inversely — couples with the monitored mental state of the first performer.
Thus the brain biofeedback will be multiplied and extended in duration through a mixture of conscious and unconscious feedback loops, triggering cascading reactions in both performers. The work is the result of an exceptional collaboration between Polish artist and composer Marek Chołoniewski and British percussionist and composer Chris Cutler, combining Chołoniewski’s sound and audiovisual achievements in electroacoustic performance with Cutler’s experience of creating avant-garde works drawing on various genres using refined instruments and techniques.
FoMaTi was produced as part of the project +100. Three works envisioning a new avant-garde, part of the Polska 100 programme — a project of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute responsible for the programme of international celebrations of the centenary of Polish independence. +100 was brought into being by Roderick Coover — the project’s artistic director. The project was developed under the institutional leadership of Anna Szylar from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
The Warszawskie Studio Eksperymentu project is carried out by MÓZG FOUNDATION in partnership with Fundacja “Sfera Harmonii” from the financial resources of the City of Warsaw. The project consists of creating and running a series of regular events across the city, whose primary aim is to build a platform for innovative and uncompromising creative activity, independent of financial and market conditions. Within the project, sound/music activities with no stylistic restrictions will take place, as well as interdisciplinary activities in which sound plays a key role.
The Contemporary Music Space Hashtag Lab is co-financed by the Capital City of Warsaw.