Liminal: embodying the visual music

19 December 2011

Last October, for the closing of the New York Electronic Art Festival, the media artist Angie Eng introduced her new instrument, the VideoBass, invented by the Swiss engineer and artist Michael Egger. In the live multimedia performance, Liminal, Eng played the new human interface device, which controls film footage accompaniment while allowing free musical improvisation, creating the great symbolic realities and succeeding in being a part of improvisational performance. Unlike conventional audiovisual interactive performances, Eng’s “performative cinema” was harmonious like music and inspiring like poetry. In this paper, I would like to explain Eng’s method, how the symbolic images were presented in the performance, and how they were processed by looking at Victor Turner’s aspect on liminality. I would like to examine the reciprocal relationship between the VideoBass and the performance, as well as its impact. Then, I will show how the VideoBass symbolizes Eng and Egger’s aesthetics of their visual music.

The multimedia performative cinema Liminal is derived from the concept of liminality, the term coined by French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep in1909. Gennep defined that there were three phases in the rite of passage, which are separation, transition, and incorporation. The liminal phase refers the transition between the phases. Because it does not belong to any group, the liminal phase is an unstable condition. In 1963, Victor Turner, a cultural anthropologist, expanded the concept to the realm of sociological and psychological states and applied it to the counter-culture movement as a metaphoric explanation of society. In his essay “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual,” Turner wrote, “In liminality, profane social relations may be discontinued, former rights and obligations are suspended, the social order may seem to have been turned upside down,” and, then, “Liminality may involve a complex sequence of episodes in sacred space-time, and may also include subversive and ludic events” (27).

In this idiosyncratic transitional phase, every existence drifts in between, so the meaning becomes “multi-vocal.” Eng took over the concept of liminality and visualized it by using metaphor and symbol in the use of media. It is a similar approach to Turner, who extended the concept from a ritual passage and “applied other aspects of culture” (Turner 30) as a metaphor, analogy, and metonymy in the social context. In her video performance, Eng manipulated the symbols associated with liminality, such as eclipse, ceremonial masks, isolation, fear, bridges, wilderness and pilgrimage. Some of these symbols are used in the rite of passage. By giving the character those unanimated symbols and making the collages, Eng’s performative cinema becomes a ceremonial event as a transition in between the analog and the digital phase. These are the literary visualizations of Turner’s comparative symbology reflecting our modern society.

By “emphasizing a live dialogue between image and sound based around set themes and concepts” (Eng, Performative Cinema), Angie Eng differentiates her multimedia collaborative projects by calling them “Performative Cinema” because the dialogue between the musical improvisation and the live video processing is factually active in the situation, space, and concept. Like the European surrealist experimental film movement of the early 1900s, her construction of visual elements does not rely on the use of effects or on today’s fantastic technology. Rather, her visual performance is purely the embodiment of her intuitive imagery of the concept, which is more closely related to writing poetry than straight video performance. When Eng works in this way, she calls it “Cinepoem.” While crossing mediums and redefining the way we experience images, “visual music,” does not refer to the synesthetic approach in her work. However, when Eng develops the concept for the moving images of a performance, she uses musical terms such as timbre, rhythm, structure, form, and pitch to describe a video piece.

Eng’s method of structuring her ideas is very unique. She uses many symbols describing magic and illusion. The way she first develops a piece is incredibly intuitive, but then she conducts a significant amount of research on her imagery. Some of this imagery may seem random, but it is very connected. The juxtaposition of analogies, all her initial choices, are subconsciously linked. After choosing some main symbols, Angie Eng will then write down some text to help understand her own work and structure the piece for a performance. This process reflects how Eng perceives metaphoric and symbolic phenomena in the real world. In other words, what the audience sees in her performance comes from her internal view. Eng gets inspiration where we see nothing. Many of these ideas are generated in her subconscious. She translates these experiences into symbols. A picture is worth a thousand words, and that is why her moving images are so narrative.

In her performance, a teleconferencing camera is often used to magnify objects. Her technique involves “demystifying the process of video making” (Video Channel). She calls it an object theater, which “combines common objects and the exotic and applied nomadism as a reoccurring metaphor for the state of existence today” (Video Channel). She often superimposes archival footage associated with the concept and objects that take a main role in the narrative structure. It looks like a live-image sculpture, showing the process and the disappearance. Eng explains, “The contrast in scale combined with an inanimate object coming to life adds to a poetic movement through time and space” (Video Channel). The audience can see the whole process: how she moves the object on the stage as well as the modulated image on the screen. She moves symbolic objects like puppets, picking up their emotions and concepts behind them. In the performance Liminal, rocks, eagle feathers, and hands were used as the objects to take a journey on the screen. Simultaneously, so as to contrast with the animated objects, she used selected clips from archival footage based on her research on ancient rituals, mysticism, and nomadic cultures. The result of imposing these moving images is that “landscapes become characters, and objects stake claim on its context” (Video Channel).

Dialogue is the key term when speaking of Eng’s collaborative strategy with musical improvisation. In order to make a productive, semiological conversation, the performance needs to have enough studio rehearsals. Like skilled improvisational musicians have their own vocabularies, Eng’s techniques include some of these improvisational tenets, such as responding to the thematic score, rhythm or tempo, timbre of digital effects, image cues, sound cues, visual cues, and color change. The collaborative development is not a monologue or parallel conversations or speaking over someone’s head.

Eng moved to Paris, and met the artists who use a bass to control video images. They were the artist group called Anyma, the Swiss video performance group by Michael Egger; and Maite Colin. The VideoBass was developed by these two artists. Egger is the engineer and programmer, and Maite plays the VideoBass. Maite says, “We are constantly changing it until it feels right” (Migros Culture Percentage). The first version of the VideoBass was made in 2003. They have improved on the VideoBass by playing and fixing it for long time. The one Eng has is the most updated version, just made in 2011.

Egger’s exploration of media performance originated in his discovery of video feedback. Shooting the video monitor by the camera, he was fascinated by the endless miracle world. Then, he started the live video performance. In order to get more tools for the show, he wanted to make the process more systematic and have more control; just sitting in front of the computer clicking the mouse and staring at the monitor frustrated him. In order to dramatize the video artist performance, he got the idea of an instrument, the VideoBass. The bass has four strings, and you can use all ten of your fingers to manipulate it. The instrument can become an extension of your body. Playing an instrument is a part of performance. The spectacle of the posture and the gesture of a performer represents what the artist is trying to carry out. Furthermore, the physical touch allows players more options for the sensitive nuances, applying the muscle memory and kinesthetic sense to switch the timeline of the footages. Unlike clicking a mouse for a single action, the four images can simultaneously and rapidly switch. The VideoBass makes it possible for the performer to apply musical technique to the video manipulation without interrupting musical improvisation. Egger says, “The film becomes very corporeal. I can feel how things are and do not really have to rely on the computer. Therefore I am able to fully concentrate on playing” (Digital Culture and Media Art From Switzerland Edition 2010).

The figure of the VideoBass is stylishly designed, its shape is sculptural, but it looks exactly like an electric bass. After careful examination, you will notice the differences; the slightly transparent body is more compact than an actual electric bass, the head does not have any pegs to roll strings, the curve of the body is seemingly ergonomic, like modern architecture, and is somewhat sensual. There is no magnetic pickup; instead, there are four switches, borrowed from PlayStation joysticks. Each string represents the timeline of the video clips, so you can track forward quickly or jump to a new section. There are two knobs on each string to assign the effects and color balance, such the contrast, saturation, or amplification. It has pedals to capture live footage and makes them loop. The software is written in MaxMSP/jitter, but it does not use MIDI technology. Instead, it utilizes open source USB sensor box, which is also developed by Egger. The monitor is designed to resemble a music stand. The height and inclination are adjustable, and the base is the case that has the computer inside; therefore, the posture for the manipulation is thoroughly disguised by playing the bass and looking at the score. By making the computer invisible, Egger made a perfect human interface instrument for more intuitive and natural interactions with musicians on stage, which allows the video artists to express more dramatic gestures for the manipulation in order to rock out the performance.

The instrument exists in the liminal position; it stands in between the internal and external of a human body. In his writing Instrumentality, David Burrows emphasizes its importance by saying, “Instruments are situated at the intersection of two directionally opposed tropisms, one of them being the urge to push or reach out from the body’s interior, the other to pull things in from the outside and establish them within our sphere of influence” (Burrows 120). When we play instruments, the idea and inspiration is conveyed through the fingers and arms to convert the energy to sound. In addition to converting the internal energy to external energy, the tactile sensation, the act of feeling the instrument, can be the threshold between the player and audience. “The interaction of skin-in with skin-out” (117) makes it possible to create more dynamic expression and the transmission of the idea. Burrows concludes that the energy transmission in the anthropomorphic aspects of instrument are “splitting the performer’s personality and displacing part of it onto an alter ego that acts as a foil, not a clone.” Eng says, “The tool sometimes dictates also the concept.” This is because if one is attached to the instrument as if an extension of one’s body, it becomes an “alter ego” or its “double.” The subconscious in the muscle and space memory may trigger the inspiration. The VideoBass plays a role for expanding the potential of her creativity.

One of Egger and Eng’s mutual aesthetic views on the VideoBass is to visualize the concept of “Visual Music.” Like Thomas Wilfred’s Lumia, which has no sound, only the visualization of music, the VideoBass does not produce any sound. Unlike Yoshimitsu Ichiraku’s Doravideo, in which the snare hits trigger the image, there is no direct correlation between Eng’s left-hand position and the sound produced in the performance. However, the figure of a person playing a bass and the gesture, as non- verbal communication, evokes the audience’s aural image. The vibe influences musicians on the stage. There also is empirical research to prove “visual aspects of music significantly influence our experience of music” (Thompson, Graham and Russo). The “visual aspects” here refer to the performer’s gestures, not the visuals projected on the screen. The researchers experimented with the influence on participants by comparing the result of audio-only presentations and audio-visual presentations. They found that there was a “significant impact on listener’s affective interpretation of the music” (Seeing music performance: Visual influences on perception and experience 193) .The audience tends to observe what is going on by what they are seeing; therefore, a performer’s reciprocal communication significantly reflects the interpersonal energy exchange in the space.

The multimedia concert Liminal consists of four pieces or cinepoems, which are Monsters, Passage, Liminal, and Totemic. In the first piece, Monster, using the samplings of three classical silent horror films, Nosferatu, Dracula, and Daughters of Horror, which were played at five times faster speed, Eng drew an overlaid image of a man’s terrified- looking face. The music started with Audrey Chen’s squeaky cello sound and hissing throat vocalization and Satoshi Takeishi’s high-pitched random percussion, creating a scary and solemn atmosphere. The quickly forwarded movie had a specific periodic character. Eng quickly drew on the graphic tablet the scary face with bright pink on the black and white movie, which increased the contrast. These contrasts were stylish, color- wise. Once the terrified face appeared on the screen, it then moved around, twirling its shape, then disappeared, re-appeared, and finally became completely abstract. The concept of “fear” is the emotional state when experiencing a rite of passage or transition from one phase to another, one role to another. In this piece, Eng used a unique visual interaction to describe the concept. In the second half of the piece, Eng instructed another live video performer, Nancy Meli Walker, not to mimic or follow the music with the light but to find her own rhythm and respond to what she hears and sees. When controlling the other device, disregarding the music and focusing on her movement is not easy. However, the uncontrollable, disintegrated movement is what makes people feel fear.

In the second piece, Passage, archival footage of the Wright brothers’ first flight was used as a metaphor of liminality. Eng thinks, “This first flight was one of the transitional moments from an agricultural society to an industrial one. It could also be seen as the beginning of the information age in correspondence with transport and speed” (Eng). The images shot by a camera on top of a pendulum spinning and swinging were superimposed on the archival footage. The visual change was minimal, but the suspense and timbre were in harmony with the musical response.

In the third piece, Liminal, there were modern metaphors for transition: the elevator, the lobby, and the bridge. “The rocks and magic squares are about the passing from one life to another. Magic squares have been used for divinatory purposes for centuries” (Eng). She used the magic squares as a rhythmic graphic that also represents how we pass through various stages of lives that transcend time. Besides the cello and percussion, the pianist Shoko Nagai joined and played internal strings with a complex rhythmic approach.

The last piece, Totemic, which is associated with a shamanistic concept referring to a cosmological relationship among spiritual-being on the earth, was the initiation ceremony of the VideoBass as Eng’s new instrument. Eng disguised her gesture like a rock star, standing up and holding the liminal instrument of the human interface device. Holding the VideoBass, Eng’s figure was natural and well-suited to the multimedia orchestration sight on the stage. On the screen, an oval stone was memorably insisting its significance. This piece was an entirely free improvisation. The screen dramatically emitted a psychedelic kaleidoscopic light show; symmetric rotation and reflection of various aboriginal patterns were developing and transforming by changing their colors. The other live video performer, Nancy Meli Walker, was swinging an eagle feather, making a flashing effect. When the harmonious dissonance and the repetitive tribal beats gradually got louder toward reaching its peak, all of the musicians’ gestures became exceedingly intense. Their bodies were oscillating and heads were swinging. All sounds became one; there was no separation of the sound. Eng’s gestures, playing the bass, were like magic. The moment the visual and the sound integrated into a solid piece, the message was transmitted into my perception, which was a sense of the total unity; there was no boundary between what I was seeing and what I was hearing. It does not matter who played which sound or which image; there was only one message. The figure of Eng with the VideoBass definitely lead to a certain direction, which was to induce a fantastic hallucination, and inspired in me what the performance was meant to be.

Because of today’s extremely advanced digital technology and its ubiquitous accessibility, we are exposed to the overflow of dramatic sound and visual representations. By using computer algorithm the stimulating and complicated audiovisual patterns can be generated without any intention, idea, or elaboration. Because of the technological novelty, audiences can enjoy the external matter as entertainment. Living in modern society, where reality is highly modulated, we may be growing into a realm of a new kind of perception between aural and visual. Nevertheless, the core of making art should be the concept, rather than a fabulously modified output. After witnessing a performance, something should be imprinted on the memory. Like Peggy Phelan says, “Performance implicates the real through the presence of living bodies.” Eng and Egger keep challenging us as to how one embodies the “visual” in a time-based situation. A live performance is a ritual. Eng’s Liminal was the ritual exposing the transition from the analog age to digital age, and the VideoBass symbolizes the embodiment of visual music.

Works Cited

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Mokuno 12

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—. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982. Print.

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