Marko Ciciliani 

Dear participants,

welcome to the blog for the upcoming LabO.
Here we can exchange any thoughts, ideas and questions regarding the workshop.

As I already informed you, the main theme of this year's LabO is GAMES.
Regarding the main workshop, I would like to invite you to start thinking how games can be used creatively in a multidisciplinary context.
Let me start today by passing on a definition of games to you, that has been formulated by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman in their highly recommendable book “Rules of Play”. According to them, “a game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome”.
The rules of a game can be compared to a musical score. Both have to be played in order to reveal their meaning. In the context of games, play can be defined as a “free movement within a more rigid structure.”
Games are imposing constrains through their rules, but at the same time also a certain amount of flexibility and space for spontaneity.

I personally find it very interesting to apply game models to artistic contexts. On the one hand it gives the opportunity to think outside of the box, and at the same time it gives orientation to structure various activities within flexible boundaries.

If you know of any musical or artistic games, please put them in a comment on this blog or send them to me at mciciliani@gmail.com.

Let's use the blog as our forum.

Best wishes,

Marko​

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Saskia Venegas 

Hello everyone 
My name is Saskia I'll be joining the workshop as a composer though I will also bring my violin. I've been thinking on ideas about games and had to think about John Zorn's piece "Cobra". Maybe it would be interesting to create our own set of signs with which we could structure improvisations?.
I'm also working on a short electronic piece for which I would be interested to collaborate with a dancer and a musician but I guess we can present it on our first day.
Greetings
Saskia
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• Marko Ciciliani  Saskia Venegas 
  ​Dear Saskia,
  thank you for your suggestion. Actually, I was planning on working on "Cobra" during the LAbO week, so I'm glad you suggested this. I already prepared the cards as they were conceived by Zorn. I also thought that the card system could be further revised and developed so that something different emerges.
  Looking forward to experimenting with this!
  Regarding the collaboration with a dancer and a musician – it's probably best to sort these things out once we are all together!
  Best,
  Marko
  ​

Kuba Krzewiński 

Dear Co-Labo-ers,

I am a 29-year-old polish composer and I'm looking for one dancer (any gender) to collaborate on my project.

project proposal:

For Labo Workshops I would be interested in pursuing my ongoing project "Ameublement de musique", which is a series of objects/instruments that I have been working on already for 1 and half year.

In order to have a better understanding please take a look at the trailer of a concert I have preformed with the objects in Hague in June 2017 :

password: labo

short Labo project description:

I am looking for a dancer who would be keen on doing a solo with one of my objects using tactile sensors and also who would be interested in working on the subject of interdisciplinary discourse of human-object relation. As for the sensors (I have only one set of sensors - therefore I would like to invite one dancer) - you can see them on the video-trailer. They work with bluetooth, so that they do not limit movement. Two of them communicate with fans hidden in the object, which results in breathing of the foil: 1 sensor for inhaling and other for exhaling. The other two I can program freely - this is yet to decide: 1) either to control sound volume 2) to control light volume 3) to control video projection.

I hope you will get this message before Monday and have a moment to think if you're interested to participate.

Kuba Krzewiński

kubakrzewinski@gmail.com

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• Marko Ciciliani  Kuba Krzewiński

  Dear Kuba,

  nice work!
  Tomorrow we will all get together for a first introduction where also all participants can introduce themselves. Maybe it's a good idea to bring along this film and we can watch it together, so you can get immediate response from all other participants.
  I suppose that not everybody will have seen it by tomorrow.

  Best regards,

  Marko

   

  ​

Adilia Yip 

Dear coaches and participants,

I am Adilia, percussionist and researcher in music performance.

Thank you for the inspiring ideas! I have been thinking about some possible game rules. Next to the big plan and ideas of yours, I would like to test these ideas during the week:

My first idea is a game about movement and sound. I want to set up a short, simple improvisation game with dancers to explore the movement of creating sound.
A musician's main task is sound production, but we often ignore the importance of movement. Being a percussionist, I want to learn more about my movement. This is different from dancers; dancers focus on movement, and in most cases, sound is the by-product/unconscious of the performance. Marije Nie, a tap dancer offers her views on movement and sound, she said: "When sound happens, movement happens in between beats, in between the sounds, in the 
silence".

I don't have a specific plan for this game yet. It could be free improvisation to experience the relationships 
between "the movement in the silence" and "the sound that is produced". To do it step by step, I would like to first work on this idea with dancers, then later, I might invite
musicians and artists of different domains to join this game.

The second idea is to use Fibonacci series-the math theory- as the game rule. In "Of Radiant Streams" (1985), Canadian composer/film maker Helen Hall uses a musical form based on Fibonacci series. It is written for four percussionists and tape. If the percussionists are happy with the idea, we can try it! Meanwhile, I hope the score will arrive my mail box this weekend.
Here is the sound sample: https://artoffrequencies.wo...

Looking forward to meet you all next week!

Adilia

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• Marko Ciciliani  Adilia Yip 

  Dear Adilia,

  thank you very much for your input.
  This sound like a very interesting plan you have with the dancers and I think this will be an excellent opportunity to learn about movement. 
  First think on Monday, we will make a small introduction where everybody briefly introduces her- and himself. If you want to, you can then already present what you would like to try out. However, if you want to take it more slowly, this is of course fine as well. There are going to be plenty opportunities throughout the week.

  Also thank you for bringing up this piece by Helen Hall. I didn't know this piece and this might also be a very nice project for the week. There are going to be quite a few percussionists participating, so there is a chance that it might work out to realize this piece.

  Best regards,

  Marko

   

  ​

Marko Ciciliani 

Dear all,

here is a workshop that I would like to offer as a side-event to our main GAME workshop. It's a workshop about DATA-BENDING. It is not related to the focus on games and play, rather the purpose is that is should add to the diversity of this year's LAbO. 
It is going to take place in the afternoons, so it is not going to collide with our main GAME workshop.

Underneath are the details. Please let me know if you have any questions. See you next week!

Best,
Marko

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DATA BENDING WORKSHOP by Marko Ciciliani
learn how to playfully manipulate sound, image and text documents on the level of bytes and bits

The look of most commercial softwares is based on an analog version of the same medium. For example, audio processing softwares are simulating analog studios, word editing programs are modelled after type writers, and digital film editors also often copy aspects from their analog predecessors.

The looks of those softwares hide the fact that on a lower level, all medium specifities are gone and all documents – no matter if photos, films or soundfiles – look the same: they are all presents as bytes and bits.

This makes data interchangeable and with some relatively simple tricks it is possible to e.g. open soundfiles in photo editing softwares, and images in audio editing softwares.

It becomes interesting, when for example soundfiles are processed as images and then converted back to audio. Often you get results, that you wouldn't be able to achieve with audio programs directly. The same goes for images that are processed in audio softwares.

By engaging in such practices you get a different understanding of the data we are dealing with every day. You learn to think out of the box and to question what standard softwares tools offer to you.

If you want to participate in this workshop, please bring the following:

* your own laptop (OSX, Windows or Linux)
* please bring a wav or aiff audio file, preferably short (3-4’)
* an mp3 audio document (mp3 is preferable to other compressed formats like .m4a etc.)
* a jpeg photo
* an uncompressed raw-data photo
* please install Audacity http://www.audacityteam.org/ (it's a free audio processing program and it runs on all platforms)
* please install Gimp https://www.gimp.org/ (this is a free photo editing program, it also runs on all platforms)
* a HexEditor, like for example Hexfiend http://ridiculousfish.com/h... (this is for OSX only, but there are many similar free programs for all operating systems)

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• Puck Vonk  Marko Ciciliani 

  The data bending workshop looks (or sounds...) really interesting! Count me in. 
  See you all monday! 
  Puck

   

  ​

Guy Cools 

Dear all,

I am looking forward to joining you soon in the upcoming LabO and to explore together with you and the other coaches the possibilities of Game and Play.

As a dance dramaturg, I mainly accompany other people's creative process, which I have come to understand as an infinite series of choices to be made and there are no good or bad choices but every choice has its own consequences. Game and Play structures offer excellent environments to keep our choice making creative.

Here are two quotes from my recent reading in preparation of the LabO to illiustrate this:

‘Playing is always deciding under uncertainty.’ (Henriot 1989, 239), (p. 196)

“The games that challenge creative thought have complex functions despite being structurally simple. Chess (3rd-6th century AD) is a good example. Tetris (1984) is another one. Both games have simple structures but are, nevertheless, functionally complex, since they hold immense possibilities and are virtually impossible to be exhausted by the player, who is lost in the hidden possibilities allowed by the functionality of the program.” (p. 180)

From the book: Rethinking Gamification, edited by Mathias Fuchs, Sonia Fizek, Paolo Ruffino and Niklas Schrape, Meson Press, Luneberg.

And for those of you, who look for their information on line. Here might want to have a look at the Ted Talk by Jane McGonigal, Gaming can make a better world on Ted.com about the growing impact of games in our everyday lives.

See you soon in Antwerp,
Guy