Featured image: detail from J Rawlinson presentation (Full Zoom Photography)
On the second day of Concurrent’s second public event, workshops and talks during the day generated debate with the audience around approaches of leading improvisers in different fields.
image: Full Zoom Photography
Saturday morning saw an innovative workshop discussing two interdisciplinary imporvisations. The first, by arts therapists (Nicky Haire, Suzi Cunningham and Helga Schram) and arts practitioners (Su-a Lee, cello, Mairi Campbell, voice and viola, Ana Almeida, dance), aimed to imbricate clinical and performative approaches to improvising. The second focused on the interaction of arts therapists only (Vicky Karkou, Becky White, Nicky Haire, Philippa Derrington, Suzi Campbell, Helga Schram), seeking to map the approaches to improvisation of music therapy and dance/movement therapy respectively. A closing debate with the audience highlighted the similar processes but contrasting implications of improvisers’ choices exercised for aesthetic versus therapeutic purposes, or exercised for an audience in contrast with the privacy of the clinical encounter.
image: Full Zoom Photography
In the afternoon, three workshop sessions covered a gamut of issues. Tara French (Glasgow School of Art) and Ana Almeida (ECA, University of Edinburgh) invited first a group of musicians, then a group of dancers onstage to experiment with improvising in each other’s discipline. This allowed the presenters to explore the identity issues that may act as barriers to trying out improvisation, and to propose exercises and approaches that may sidestep such problems in, for example, community settings.
image: Full Zoom Photography
Adam Linson (University of Dundee) and PA Tremblay improvised together for the first time with turntable, bass guitar and electronics. Cascades of electronic sound formed a prelude to discussing with the audience the use of computing resources to facilitate improvised interaction.
image: Full Zoom Photography
Finally Jules Rawlinson (ECA, University of Edinburgh) presented the remarkable live processing techniques he devised and deployed for the opera A Requiem for Edward Snowden with Matt Collings, allowing musical performers to improvise with and in response to digital imagery in real time. By way of demonstration, Lindsay Duncanson & Marek Gabrysch from Noizechoir were on hand to provide vocal improvisations in conjunction with footage and imagery manipulated by Rawlinson and the system itself.
You can watch footage of performances from Concurrent#2 on the media page