Statement of intent
Iquisme is a show for both eyes and ears depicting the organic evolution of an intermedia world.
In the form of a video opera, Iquisme intends to represent a plurality of social, cultural or political connections on which humans base the references of their identities. The work illustrates the logic of these relations by means of a sensory experience made possible by a mix of interactive and generative writing using sound, image and words.
The opera gets its title from putting together the suffixes –ique and –ism. From latin –icus (“pertaining to” or “particular to” sth), -ique hereby refers to ideas of relation and identity. As for the suffix –isme, it creates a concept, a doctrine, out of a word. Iquisme’s drama dialectics revolve around this combination.
The work stages the organic excitement of its formal elements. Sound, verbal and visual entities all aggregate in a multitude of structures animated by an oscillating design in a search for equilibrium and freedom.
The movements of each structure remain unstable as they’re thwarted by the impossibility to obtain a global cohesion. Thus, they illustrate the paradox Iquisme intends to highlight: the contradictory coexistence of a search for organization and a force of disintegration.
In an ever changing process, structures merge, writhe and scatter sequentially along the narrative thread. These evolutions evoke the formation and the dissolution of societies, doctrines or concepts which found them; they represent the continuous social transmutations in a tragic, restless flow.
The “narrative” is made of three kinds of writing. The first is musical, electroacoustic and for instruments; the second is pictorial, through generative video; and the third is textual, through the lyrics. The writings come to life thanks to an electronic device which manages interactive orchestrations between them within the scenic space of the concert hall. Confronted to this ever changing flow of complex and numerous informations, the audience gets its perceptions soon saturated and is progressively immersed in the aesthetics of the work.
The music for soprano, nine amplified instruments and an electroacoustic device offers a constantly evolving message. From fine airborne dust to massive aggregates of matter, the sound objects are beforehand carefully exposed along the sheet. They are to be propelled into the polyphonic and rhythmic pattern of an acoustic space ruled by the parameters of the real time interactivity with the electroacoustic and video devices.
The generative video also interacts in real time with the music. It depicts the evolution of groups of particles organizing and disorganizing continuously. These particles constitute elementary visual forms of the political allegories staged by Iquisme. As such, they represent individual entities animated by a code of their own, like an idiosyncratic concept.
The lyrics by Fanny Torres develop a dramatic and allegoric expression of the relations engaged in the flow of music and images. The singer is given three roles: two characters and a narrator. She starts a dialogue which, played by a single interpreter, takes on an almost schizophrenic dimension.
The first character, “the numeric”, symbolizes the individual. It perceives the environment only to place itself in it. Since it is only aware of what asserts it, its timbre is monochord and its speech unequivocal. It doesn’t rely on any mediation to assert itself and thus represents an immediate identity.
On the contrary, the second character, “the analogic”, embodies the group. It is defined by what surrounds it and only becomes complete through the other. It embodies relation. It is aware of alterity, globality and context which imparts its language a metaphoric dimension, sometimes ambiguous.
In a more or less conscious speech, both characters express their different perceptions of the relation; along the scenes, they develop their respective positions on identity and alterity. As their personality becomes more asserted, the audience witnesses their differences. Two antagonistic characters confront each other: the individual point of view versus the collective thought.
Finally, an omniscient “narrator” is the only one capable of thinking and writing the entirety of the situation, that is articulating the dialectics of peculiar and universal. This articulation is narrated as well as enacted along the work by the narrator, whose interventions are not limited to the description of the whole scene, but also consist of commentaries.
The sound diffusion of the text sung by the interpreter reacts to the generative video. The electronic device, which manages the real time interaction between the three types of writing, magnifies and multiplies the soprano’s voice according to the aggregating or dispersing processes which drive the behavior of the particles in the video. Spatialized around the room in an echo to the real speech, virtual voices are to expand the lyrics semantics thanks to different effects: mass, scattering, bursts of speed or exaggerated slowing down, all playing with the lexicon and projecting all of it in a large, imaginary choir.
After several personal experiences, plastic or musical, in the field of information technologies, Iquisme is driven by an ambition to create an interactive writing which addresses at the same time sound and visual creations. This kind of writing is based on the use of technologies allowing to create, control and analyze interactive flows. Sequentially or simultaneously, music, video and voice all have their input on the developments of the different sections and movements. From this results a “media orchestration” to which the use of information and communication sciences was a major conceptual and technical prerequisite.
Iquisme is also the fruit of reflections on language, sociology and forms of perception. Approached in previous creations, musical pieces or artistic installations, these concerns are hereby gathered to highlight their appearances and articulations between the bounds of sensitive subjectivity and logic.
