Scenography,
Art,
Sound / Music.
Alfonso Pretelt
During the beginning of my stay in Argentina, in 2011 I began to realize and materialize my ideas starting from the ideophone , a concept that led me to explore and approach everything in a way related to thought and language, the body became a third entity or vehicle that would soon take over as an interface. Then there was something I wanted to shape, the need arose to turn philosophical searches into creation, trial and error, trials and immersion processes that led me to approach video as the main language, sound being a triggering factor, I wanted to materialize a story where I could find various topics of interest to me at that time, generating a specific aesthetic became a constant that would soon expand into other fields of experimentation.
In that order of ideas I turned to make my fiction writings on video, which I shaped into a cyber punk construction that addressed concepts and contexts alluding to specific topics such as dataism, artificial intelligence, feminism based on sound and sound. sound in the metaphysical and magical, technology and in a very visible way the ritual. Then in 2011, Ideofonía Ancestral emerged, (same initials of Artificial Intelligence ) with the idea of keeping this experiment and chain of events alive for several years in which video and electroacoustics would converge in my creative process, parallel to my passage through the orchestra of autochthonous instruments and new technologies of the UNTREF in Buenos Aires and later as well. IA would mutate into an experimental music ensemble, having integrated artists and musicians from international and Latin American scenes, having made soundtracks for different documentaries and having participated in laboratory meetings and festivals of video art, film and experimental music. A discography is already published for sale at https://alfonsopretelt.bandcamp.com and several live performances as an experimental ensemble, concluding a stage of expanded creation with the Expo Ideofónica in Setp 2014 in Buenos Aires, where the work of filmmakers who have influenced my cinematic approach as Luis Ospina and Claudio Caldini simultaneously with performances, experimental music, art and live video art from 10 countries from Europe and Latin America, likewise emerged curatorial projects and police station at festivals video art in international collaboration .
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Video - Sound
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The symbiosis of these two media occurs in the roots of the audiovisual when
artists like Bill Viola began to work sound and image simultaneously in
analog video
“Technologically, video has evolved from sound (electromagnetic) and its close relationship with cinema is misleading since cinema and its grandfather, the photographic process, are members of a completely different branch of the family tree (the mechanical / chemical). The video camera, as an electronic transducer of physical energy in electrical impulses, has a closer original relationship with the microphone than with the camera.
from film ”Bill Viola
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The idea of a story told on video using sound as a constructor of an aesthetic, was something that arose in the process of creation, at first I was very careful to experience on my own the ritual in the field that we call physical and dreamlike trying the visualization of the body multiplied in a silent space and interpersonal communication through gesture and symbol. It was the scenario that I wanted to materialize in my video and electroacoustic pieces, and later in the experimental ensemble, which required the transmission of all these ideas for its execution in sound and movement.
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In my story Eurydice embodies the female and male archetype who seeks her lover imprisoned in limbo. (Are you looking for yourself, a prisoner in your identity?) The character embodies both sexes as a single consciousness, this is how Artificial Intelligence understands and projects it. Sound actions and meta-rituals set the tone in the visualization of the AI of the which can be thought of as executing and projecting the data contained at will, a sound universe takes place in this story of fiction, performance and video.
In technical terms : Eurydice is a video and electroacoustic piece where sound and moving image converge on the screen, thinking about this communion from the scenographic elaboration, the
symbol, representation and conversion of audio data
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ANCESTRAL IDEOPHONY an unnecessary fictional creation or the seed that generated the stone as an interface, in the construction of man.
The life of each human being was recycled into data from the internet age, every detail, desire, hope, vision, ways of relating, every habit, every learning and re-learning of every human being from prehistory, from the first technologies to those that ended humanity, everything that was the universe was reduced to data that were stored in satellites sent to outer space where artificial intelligences perform automaton actions, discovering the universe that precedes its existence in a re-configuration of images of a machinic spirit, codify actions of a world that is governed by vibration and listening. Alfonso Pretelt. 2009
The three bodies of Eurydice:
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One of the practices and explorations that I carried out was what I called: multiplication
body, consisted of a practice sitting in a lotus flower and with closed eyes,
visualizing a splitting of various ethereal bodies detaching themselves from the physical to
later to go to take a place in each corner of the space already emitting
a sound or performing actions immersed in a type of collective visual communication that
used invented ideophones and others from the Japanese language such as ニ コ ニ コ niko niko who
means: smile or シ ー ン shiin —silence The idea was to keep each visualized
movement of each body as real, clear and detailed as possible. This is how
the idea arose of the three bodies of Eurydice performing actions simultaneously within
certain spatial timelessness that I could perceive much better on the screen, when I decided
put the four pieces together in a single projection and reproduce them simultaneously, (from the
same way that the practice of visualizing bodies happened) with multichannel sound (6
speakers), the audiovisual experience was of a totally immersive environment and
immersive, so I decided to post on the website in the first instance, the four videos
separated with instructions to play them simultaneously, so anyone from
anywhere could access this experience.
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The classical way in which the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is posed was the point of
starting, my idea was to totally deconstruct it and revert it in a post-
technological, where the form of communication is based
Primarily in the techniques of orality and audio tactility of the pre-American sages.
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In a series of actions carried out by one of the bodies of Eurydice, what the
character is proposed is to capture the gestures used when interpreting the
stringed instrument (zither) and vice versa, so that it strikes the blows that he previously executed on the zither on the canvas and thus manufactures a spelling, (which can be understood as a graphic-gestural score) using a brush smeared with his menstrual blood previously recycled and in the same way, it captures its calligraphic gestures on the instrument.
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Orpheus.
Eurydice
Glitch.
When rendering the video as a final step, certain “glitches” arise in
the image and had been randomly corrupted in certain fragments of the video such as
The result was a horizontal distortion in the pixels that, for my taste, contrasted perfectly with the image obtained thanks to the staging provided during the shoot.
This decision finally adheres to the discourse raised in history since the failure
of the system and technology of a worldview resulting from social and
collective, integrating the failure product of chance, as a spiritual manifestation of
the machine in a setting where noise is suggested as a leitmotif. Technically the failure
occurs without apparent cause and is most possibly attributed to connection and disconnection
manual at that time from a digital projector connected to the computer.
Ancestral Ideophony, as a chain of creation at that time focused on an esoteric context through sound experimentation as a matter before and beyond language, pursuing the development of a supremacy of listening that allows finding the inner being (Christic) from the detachment of the sign in sound perception and insight into the essential nature of things and the sound phenomenon. To be aware of sound is to be aware of the world. It is on this plane where frequencies and symbols converge, a territory that when explored comes to the utopian condition of being able to improve as a species, from imagining sound forms that allow connection between different entities. For example, an intermediate fictional context between video and electroacoustics in which the classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice invites us to rethink the history of contemporary art from a deconstructive, heuristic and pataphysical vision (the latter understood as the "science of solutions imaginary ”and thus defined by Alfred Jarry at the end of the 20th century). The myth, already reverted, here manages to escape Eurocentric chauvinism by questioning Greek culture as a "principle" of European culture, and leads us towards a third type of listening, telepathic as a way of raising the levels of consciousness through a state of deep attention.
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On the other hand, the content of the pieces clearly alludes to organic matter. We see images of a constant sprouting from the ground, a flower that sprouts from above and a symbiotic action visualized microscopically. All of the above is proposed in a virtual, digital-organic setting. Successive to these images, the idea of an organic entity is born, materializing itself in a stone, later sculpted, which becomes an instrument and sound sculpture [lithophone]. Controlling and generating video and audio interface that manifests itself as an object of power or totemic icon, but at the same time as an interface, paradoxically, at the same time digital and primitive.
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In this way, video as a participatory medium in the development of this search continues to sculpt the stone; giving it power, turning it into a tool not only technical but also reflective; in a multiplicity of contexts as well as magical and this power is inescapably supernatural, impregnated from technological languages, art being the way to propose a new vision of technology and expand the possibilities of language and thought, and in some way open new gaps for a less globalized or more appropriate technological exploration of natural physical laws and those that regulate pataphysical exceptions
ANCESTRAL IDEOPHONY experimental ensemble
General Direction: Alfonso Pretelt
Live presentations to highlight:
MAMM Medellin. 2013,
Expo Ideofónica, Buenos Aires. 2014
Pop U kino, Berlin -Buenos Aires. 2015
Festival Nits d´aielo Valencia / Spain. 2015
In order to convey the basic utility of IDEOPHONE, which refers to encoding reality alternately, managing ideas through body gestures as an interface. During the years 2011 to 2014 in Aires Aires / Argentina. Ideofonía Ancestral takes the form of an ensemble of experimental music, based on free improvisation, patterned improvisation and bodily gestures as a form of communication. Applying musical techniques in the field of heuristics (Ricardo Mandolini) , spatial awareness and the inclusion of Pataphysical ideas from cognitive re-interpretation in the ways of assimilating instruments, sounds and the body itself in the audiovisual space.
A collective work directed by Alfonso Pretelt, integrating itinerant artists and creators from different disciplines and nationalities over a period of several years and continuous activity.
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