As a part of the Ulysses Journeys for performers, in September 2023 the duo rotk?ppchen (me - Alisa Kobzar - music and multimedia art, Lisa McGuire - choreography and dance) was selected to have a short residency and performance at the Ultima contemporary music festival in Oslo. Ulysses Journeys for performers lets the selected participants get workshops or supervision by the local artists or institutions in order to improve and complete their skills. Upon a recommendation of the possible supervising institution in Oslo, my professor Gerhard Eckel at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz pointed me towards RITMO and especially Alexander Refsum Jensenius.
Photo by: Signe Fuglesteg Luksengard/Ultima
Since our duo rotk?ppchen works interdisciplinary within the different facets of multimedia art, the topics, goals and philosophy of RITMO (which I have discovered online) very much resonate with ours. The competencies, research scopes, as well as creative experiences of Alexander Jensenius were also very relevant to the questions I was concerned with for a long time during the creative work in our duo. I was very delighted eventually to get information from the Ulysses Platform coordination and management, that our duo was approved to have a performance and residency at RITMO and Alexander as our supervisor!
Shortly thereafter, I received an email from Alexander, suggesting that we can have some introductory online meetings. These meetings were very productive for me. Apart from planning together what would be good for our duo to do during the residency, we have discussed with Alexander many aspects of his interdisciplinary research and collaborations with people of different contemporary art and music backgrounds, especially the movement artists - dancers and choreographers.
It is worth mentioning, that before coming to Oslo I took an online course on motion capture "Motion Capture: The Art of Studying Human Activity", created at RITMO. The course contains a rather comprehensive knowledge base about the human body and motion, ways and devices to describe and measure biomechanics of the human body, description and reflection on different motion capture system solutions, as well as various applications of the mentioned systems in the researches carried out at RITMO. Even though I have learned much of the content provided in that course elsewhere, it was very useful for me to go systematically through all the topics.
While giving a presentation on my artistic research within rotk?ppchen duo, I was surprised by the very warm and friendly atmosphere, as well as productive exchange and positive feedbacks from the researchers of RITMO.
During our short residency, as mentioned before, duo rotk?ppchen was not only preparing and adapting the "Floating pointers" project to the given space but also revising the existing methods of working, as well as trying some new approaches.
Under the supervision of A. Jensenius, who gave us numerous recommendations on interaction, dramaturgy and scenic design, I decided to reflect further on my position, place and role in the live performance of "Floating pointers" in particular, and in the live performances of the duo rotk?ppchen in general.
Photo by: Signe Fuglesteg Luksengard/Ultima
The infrastructure of RITMO (under the tireless assistance and technical support of Hugh Alexander von Arnim and Kayla Burnim) allowed us to explore alternative sensor solutions (alternative to those, that we are currently using) for the motion data capturing, analysing and live processing. We tried out different prototypes and manufactured sensors, as well as a full-body mocap suit with a series of IMUs .
Even though our residency lasted less than a week, both of us in duo rotk?ppchen, I think, have gained a lot of creative experience and input, sketching our further working paths.
Excerpts from the "Floating pointers" performance can be accessed here: