THEORY AND PRACTICE IN MUSICIAN-DANCER ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC AUDIO-VISUAL COLLABORATION

We know that all music comes from movement. Whether it’s a conductor directing an orchestra, an arm pulling a bow across a string, or current moving a speaker cone, movement drives music just as music inspires movement.

I started incorporating dance and improvisation into my composition practice in 2014. Over the past 12 years, I’ve developed strategies and frameworks for interdisciplinary collaboration, both with and without digital tools.

This 6-hour workshop will review paradigms for musician-dancer collaboration. This will include:

• Discussion of philosophies on improvisation, rehearsal, and performance of interdisciplinary projects
• musician-dancer improvisation exercises
• building motion-sound-reactive audio-visual environments in MaxMSP and TouchDesigner
• utilizing cameras and motion sensors

Participants will have the opportunity to improvise sound and movement with each other. By the end of the workshop, participants will have created individualized patches for musician-dancer collaboration, and they’ll be knowledgeable of collaborative frameworks to amplify and recontexualize the body.

Duration: 6 hours / 2 days / 3 hour per day

Max.Number of Participants: 12

Level of Experience: Experienced beginner to intermediate Max/Touchdesigner

What equipment participants should bring: Participants should be in contact with me in the weeks leading up to the workshop. I will distribute Max and TD patches with software/version requirements. Participants should bring devices they wish to use in dancer-musician collaborations (instruments, cameras, sensors, controllers, etc). Additionally, participants come ready to explore and improvise sound and movement.

Scott Rubin is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, composer, violist, and improviser whose work interrogates relationships between sound and movement through analog and digital means. His recent projects have involved collaborations with musicians and dancers, often incorporating interactive acoustic/electronic improvisation, expanded performance practices, motion-sensors, and live video. In these projects, he engages themes of intimacy, control, and the sublime. 

His recent collaborations have been with Cristal Sabbagh, olula negre, Tuli Bera, Helen Lee, Adam Shead, Amanda Maraist, Haruhi Kobayashi, Chris Knowlton, Irene Hsiao, Nick Turner, and Rin Peisert. His work has been presented at the Chicago Jazz String Summit,Steppenwolf Theater, Hyde Park Arts Center, Instigation Festival, Elastic Arts, Bimbom Studios, Pivot Arts, IRCAM (Paris, France), Gaudeamus Musicweek (Utrecht, Netherlands), Brick 15 (Vienna, Austria), Theatre Am Lend (Graz, Austria), and Gnesin Contemporary Music Week (Moscow, Russia). 

Scott earned a PhD at the University of California at Berkeley where he studied with Ken Ueno, Franck Bedrossian, Myra Melford, Edmund Campion, and Cindy Cox. He was an active researcher at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). Previously, he participated in the IRCAM Cursus program where he studied with Thierry de Mey.

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