Cope:code
What is rhythm? “We are only conscious of most of our rhythms when we begin to suffer from some irregularity. It is in the psychological, social, organic unity of the ‘perceiver’ who is oriented towards the perceived, which is to say towards objects, towards surroundings and towards other people, that the rhythms that compose this unity are given”
Henri Lefebvre, 2004
*Cope:code* is a multi-location performance and collaboration with the scholar Niels Jørgen Gommesen. The project explores and experiments with rhythms and sounds of everyday practices that have emerged during the coronavirus pandemic, as a way to establish new affirmative relationships. The artists will collect footage from friends to create an audiovisual piece that explores the affective dimensions of rhythm.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, we’ve all been forced to adjust ourselves to new rhythms. By necessity – be it material, physical, spiritual or of any kind –, in order to cope with the current conditions, we have started to engage with new activities, and new sounds and rhythms have become part of our sonic environment. Carefully listening and playfully engaging with them, the emerging patterns and rhythms offer the possibility to speculate about sonic futures, coming into being as a result of mutual exchanges of sound and interactions across time and borders.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, we’ve all been forced to adjust ourselves to new rhythms. By necessity – be it material, physical, spiritual or of any kind –, in order to cope with the current conditions, we have started to engage with new activities, and new sounds and rhythms have become part of our sonic environment. Carefully listening and playfully engaging with them, the emerging patterns and rhythms offer the possibility to speculate about sonic futures, coming into being as a result of mutual exchanges of sound and interactions across time and borders.
Through coding and exploration of patterns in TidalCycles, “a language environment for exploring algorithmic pattern - Alex McLean”, and through sampling, beat-mapping, and analog sound synthesis and processing, the aim of the performance is to communicate and interact, with and through each others’ everyday rhythms, and make different sounds and sonic environments resonate and communicate with each other.
Some of the questions we are trying to shed a light on through our explorations: what happens when we make different locations and milieus communicate with each other through sound and listening? How can this network collaboration help to nurture new collaborative practices for making and exploring sonic patterns and music, for listening and rethinking relations between sound, place and body? How are sonic bodies enacted and materialized through our situated, connected yet distanced bodies? What musical possibilities do these interactions foster? What’s the scope and agency of sonic fictions?
We presented cope:code at the
Network Music Festival in July 2020, and is an ongoing exploration.
Some of the questions we are trying to shed a light on through our explorations: what happens when we make different locations and milieus communicate with each other through sound and listening? How can this network collaboration help to nurture new collaborative practices for making and exploring sonic patterns and music, for listening and rethinking relations between sound, place and body? How are sonic bodies enacted and materialized through our situated, connected yet distanced bodies? What musical possibilities do these interactions foster? What’s the scope and agency of sonic fictions?
We presented cope:code at the
Network Music Festival in July 2020, and is an ongoing exploration.