Pierre Berthet & Rie Nakajima: Dead Plants & Living Objects

Display Schedule

Subject guarantor:

Miloš VOJTĚCHOVSKÝ

Name of lecturer(s):

Miloš VOJTĚCHOVSKÝ

Learning outcomes of the course unit:

Students are introduced to working artists established in the field of audio-visual art, performance, experimental music and art theatre.

Mode of study:

Creative workshop

Prerequisites and co-requisites:

none

Course contents:

Riu Nakajima (Japan) and Pierre Berthet (Belgium) through installations and performance experiment with manners of mechanically sonicating and moving objects and working with the visual and acoustic elements of a space. How to handle objects and space in order to breathe life into them and learn to understand a space. If we wish to animate objects we may touch, cool, shake, knock them down, rub, scratch, crush, boil, rattle, throw them, move them over, apply a magnet or connect them to electrical motors.

Program:

10:00 Introduction to the acoustics and kinetics of objects. The relationship between a found object, a musical instrument and a man. The physical and kinetic characteristics of an object. Changes in acoustic instruments

Examples from both artists' works

11:00 - 12:30: Workshop, lecturers explaint their methods of echoing and animating objects and the creation of kinetic and sound installations. Students, with lecturers' assistants, alone or in a group create a kinetic/acoustic instrument (it is possible to bring your own object, toy).

12:30 - 13:00: Lunch

13:00 - 14:00 test and final group improvisation to be video-recorded.

18:30: Performance by both artists in the Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace in the Prague Gallery.

Recommended or required reading:

Cathy van Eck: Between Air and Electricity: Microphones and Loudspeakers as Musical Instruments

Nicoval Collins: Handmade Electronic Music -- The Art of Hardware Hacking

Assessment methods and criteria:

Workshop participation

Course web page:

Note:

Video documentary of a performance by Pierre Berthed and Rie Nakajima

https://youtu.be/gJnF4EEyack

Lecturer CV:

Rie Nakayima is a Japanese artist who lives and works in London. She is active in the field of installations and performance. Her work, largely, reacts directly to the characteristics of the architecture of a space and frequently uses a combination of the kinetic characteristics of instruments and found objects. She has had installations and performances in Great Britain, America and elsewhere abroad. Since 2013 she has collaborated with the musician and theorititian, David Toop and with Keiko Yamamoto on the O YAMA O project where they investigated the potential of genre-less music.

Pierre Berthet studied percussion at the conservatory in Brussels and Liege, and improvisation with Garret List, compostion with Frederic Rzewski, and music theory with Henri Pousseura. In the 1990s - inspired by Alvin Luciere, Terry Fox and Paul Panhuysen, he experimented with long strings and with sonicated objects and resonators. Pierre has played for many years with Arnold Dreyblatter's Orchestra of Exiting Strings and has performed wtih Frederic Le Junter. Since the 1990s he has created sound and visual installations in interiors, in the countryside and in public spaces. In 2000, he began investigating the potential use of vacuum cleaners. In 2010 he worked on the composition „Gallileo“ for 5 pendulums by Tom Johnson. Later he began to use the sound of mechanically shaken dry plants and with Rie he has worked on a project where electric motors move plants, and movement in a space (automobility).

http://pierre.berthet.be

Further information:

This course is an elective for all AMU students

Schedule for winter semester 2017/2018:

Date	Day	Time	Tutor	Location	Notes	No. of paralel
24.10.2017		10:00–14:00	Miloš VOJTĚCHOVSKÝ	Institut intermédií - Dejvice	Lecturers: Pierre Berthet & Rie Nakajima	paralelka 1

Schedule for summer semester 2017/2018:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

The subject is a part of the following study plans: