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Soundpainting: A Tool for Collaborating During Performance

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Artistic Research in Performance through Collaboration

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Abstract

This chapter takes a particular case study, that of the live multimodal signed gestural language, Soundpainting, to reassess the issues of intuition, dissemination and authorship in a collaborative context. It defines what Soundpainting is and illustrates how a performer-composer uses their intuition in the creation of a new work. It seeks new forms of dissemination and performance practice. It then questions the notion of authorship within a work which is created through a collaborative process, in the moment, using intuition and dialogue.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Robin Nelson, Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, protocols, pedagogies, resistances (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

  2. 2.

    Helen Julia Minors, ‘Music and Movement in Dialogue: Exploring gesture in Soundpainting,’ Les Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique, 13, no. 1–2 (2012): 87–96.

  3. 3.

    Angelique Cormier and Walter Thompson, What About the Bush?, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Huc-f8zigxQ. (last accessed 2 August 2019).

  4. 4.

    Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon, eds., Performance and Technology: Practices of virtual embodiment and interactivity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 195.

  5. 5.

    Walter Thompson, ‘Questionnaire: Written and conducted by Helen Julia Minors,’ Kingston University, London, 2010. http://www.Soundpainting.com/blog/. (last accessed 2 August 2019).

  6. 6.

    Daniel Albright, Music Speaks: On the language of opera, dance, and song (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2009).

  7. 7.

    Thompson, ‘Questionnaire,’ 2010.

  8. 8.

    Ibid.

  9. 9.

    Walter Thompson, Soundpainting; The Art of Live Composition, Workbook 3: Theater and Dance [with DVD] (New York, Walter Thompson Orchestra, 2014); Walter Thompson, Soundpainting; The Art of Live Composition, Workbook 2 [with DVD] (New York, Walter Thompson Orchestra, 2009a); Walter Thompson, Soundpainting; The Art of Live Composition, Workbook 1 [with DVD] (New York, Walter Thompson Orchestra, 2006).

  10. 10.

    Walter Thompson and Helen Julia Minors, ‘Soundpainting Interview with Walter Thompson Part 1,’ 2015a, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRLRVumJfhg. (date last accessed 2 August 2019).

  11. 11.

    Thompson, ‘Questionnaire,’ 2010.

  12. 12.

    I refer to Think Tank members by art form and number in what follows. I am grateful to those you took the time to respond to my questions during the Think Tank and to those you emailed replies after the event.

  13. 13.

    Thompson, ‘Questionnaire,’ 2010.

  14. 14.

    For an example of this see Helen Julia Minors, Pamela Burnard, Charles Wiffen, Zaina Shihabi and J. Simon Van Der Walt, ‘Mapping Trends and Framing Issues in Higher Music Education: Challenging minds/changes practices,’ London Review of Education, 15, no. 3 (2017): 457–473.

  15. 15.

    Thompson, ‘Questionnaire,’ 2010.

  16. 16.

    Ibid.

  17. 17.

    For a discussion of this syntax see Minors, ‘Music and Movement in Dialogue,’ 2012, 87–96.

  18. 18.

    Ibid.

  19. 19.

    Thompson, ‘Questionnaire,’ 2010.

  20. 20.

    Ibid.

  21. 21.

    Ibid.

  22. 22.

    In personal discussion with Thompson, during the 2013 Think Tank.

  23. 23.

    Peter Wiegold, ‘The Third Orchestra,’ Barbican, 2019. https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2019/event/the-third-orchestra. (last accessed 9 August 2019).

  24. 24.

    Peter Wiegold and Helen Julia Minors, ‘Women’s Voices at Club Inégales,’ London: Club Inégales, 2019.

  25. 25.

    Discussion of specific issues or performances in Soundpainting can be read in Minors, ‘Music and Movement in Dialogue,’ 2012 Helen Julia Minors, ‘Soundpainting: Navigating creativity,’ Choreologica: The Journal of European association of dance historians, 6, no. 1 (2013b): 79–90; or Helen Julia Minors, ‘Soundpainting: The use of space in creating dance-music pieces,’ in Sound, Music and the Moving-thinking Body, edited by Marilyn Wyres and Lorenzo Glieca (London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013c), 27–34.

  26. 26.

    Nelson, Practice as Research, 2013, 57.

  27. 27.

    What About the Bush? (01:43–02:18). The time codes used from herein refer to minutes and seconds.

  28. 28.

    Nelson, Practice as Research, 2013, 58.

  29. 29.

    Robyn Stewart, ‘Creating New Stories For Praxis: Navigations, narrations, neonarratives,’ in Practice as Research: Approaches to creative arts, edited by Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt (London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 2007, rpt 2010), 124.

  30. 30.

    Jerome Bruner, Toward a Theory of Instruction (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press, 1966), 72.

  31. 31.

    Donald A. Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How professionals think in action (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1983), 42.

  32. 32.

    Nelson, Practice as Research, 2013, 22.

  33. 33.

    Ibid.

  34. 34.

    Philip Taylor, ‘Doing Reflective Practitioner Research in Arts Education,’ in Researching Drama and Arts Education: Paradigms and possibilities (London: Flamer Press, 1996), 25–28.

  35. 35.

    Thompson, ‘Questionnaire,’ 2010.

  36. 36.

    Marc Duby, ‘Soundpainting as a System for the Collaborative Creation of Music in Performance,’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pretoria, South Africa, 2006, 37.

  37. 37.

    Robert Cohen, Working Together in Theatre: Collaboration and leadership (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 9.

  38. 38.

    Elizabeth Haddon and Pamela Burnard, eds., Creative Teaching for Creative Learning in Higher Music Education (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 242.

  39. 39.

    Ibid.

  40. 40.

    Cohen, Working Together in Theatre, 2011, 13.

  41. 41.

    Thompson, ‘Questionnaire,’ 2010.

  42. 42.

    For further discussion on reflexive action, in other words reflection in and reflection on actions see Schön, The Reflective Practitioner, 1998.

  43. 43.

    Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture (London and New York: Routledge), 1999.

  44. 44.

    ‘2013 Soundpainting Think Tank,’ email Invitation, August 2012.

  45. 45.

    Thompson, ‘Questionnaire,’ 2010.

  46. 46.

    I outline an idea of the moment experience elsewhere discussing what happens in the moment from the interpretative perspective, see ‘Exploring Interart Dialogue in Erik Satie’s Sports et Divertissements (1914/1922),’ in Erik Satie: Music, art and literature, edited by Caroline Potter (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 115–136.

  47. 47.

    Thompson, Soundpainting; The Art of Live Composition, Workbook 3, 6.

  48. 48.

    Minors, ‘Music and Movement in Dialogue,’ 2012, 88.

  49. 49.

    Simon Frith, Performing Rites (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1996), 211.

  50. 50.

    What About the Bush?

  51. 51.

    Baz Kershaw and Helen Nicholson, eds., Research Methods in Theatre and Performance (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 11.

  52. 52.

    Paul Carter, ‘Interest: The ethics of invention,’ in Practice as Research: Approaches to creative arts, edited by Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt (London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 2007, rpt 2010), 22.

  53. 53.

    Thompson, ‘Questionnaire,’ 2010.

  54. 54.

    Ibid.

  55. 55.

    Carter, ‘Interest: The Ethics of Invention,’ 14.

  56. 56.

    Walter Thompson and Helen Julia Minors, ‘Interview in Paris’, recording of a structured conversation shot at the Réunion des musiciens de jazz, Paris, 2011: 03:28–03:38.

  57. 57.

    See Minors, ‘Music and Movement in Dialogue,’ 2012; Thompson, ‘Questionnaire,’ 2010; Minors, ‘Soundpainting: Navigating creativity,’ 2013b; Minors, ‘Soundpainting: The use of space in creating dance-music pieces,’ 2013c; Thompson, ‘Soundpainting Interview with Walter Thompson,’ 2015, Parts 1–4.

  58. 58.

    Bruno Faria, ‘Exercising Musicianship anew Through Soundpainting Speaking Music Through Sound Gestures,’ Ph.D. dissertation, Malmö Academy of Music, Sweden, 2016, 26.

  59. 59.

    Christopher Small, Musicking: The meanings of performing and listening (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1998), 9.

  60. 60.

    Christopher Bannermann and Cahal McLaughin, ‘Collaborative Ethics in Practice-as-Research,’ in Practice-as-Research: In performance and screen, edited by Ludiume Allegue, Simon Jones, Baz Kershaw and Angela Piccini (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 67.

  61. 61.

    Ibid., 69.

  62. 62.

    Ibid., 68.

  63. 63.

    What About the Bush? (08:50–09:50).

  64. 64.

    Thompson, ‘Questionnaire,’ 2010.

  65. 65.

    What About the Bush? (00:00–00:26).

  66. 66.

    Thompson, ‘Questionnaire,’ 2010.

  67. 67.

    Ibid.

  68. 68.

    Ibid.

  69. 69.

    Ibid.

  70. 70.

    Hazel Smith and Roger T. Dean, eds., Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 197.

  71. 71.

    Further experiments in the dissemination of Soundpainting have continued, notably the International Soundpainting Video Postcard Project, which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAkP3R8RUMIkIgvMi_uRcHw (last accessed 10 August 2019).

  72. 72.

    Nelson, Practice as Research, 2013, 22.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to all who collaborated on the 2013 International Soundpainting Think Tank and the Kingston Soundpainting Ensemble, especially to Claudio Somigli, Jennifer Rahfeldt, Bruno Faria, Jane Masters, Merrellene Middleton, and Lucy Ryding. Special thanks to The Practice Research Unit at Kingston University which ran from 2010 to 2015, for funding this Think Tank, and Roehampton University for funding the 2008 artist in residence scheme from where this collaboration began. I dedicate this chapter to the memory of fellow Soundpainter and Think Tank participant, Diego Ghymers.

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  1. Kingston University, London, UK

    Helen Julia Minors

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  1. Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

    Martin Blain

  2. Kingston University, London, UK

    Helen Julia Minors

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Minors, H.J. (2020). Soundpainting: A Tool for Collaborating During Performance. In: Blain, M., Minors, H. (eds) Artistic Research in Performance through Collaboration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38599-6_7

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