W_space a collaboration between Paola Tognazzi and Tom Tlalim

W_space...

Paola Tognazzi Doron Hirsh Tom Tlalim behind the camera W_(Holland/Israel/Italy)

We have been selected to develop our project W_space at medialab prado madrid in september 2008.
We hope for it to be as wonderful experience as the one I had when I participate to the Interactivos 2008 where I met great artists and pedagoges like Simone Jones, Alvaro Cassinelli, Julian Oliver.
This time is also very promising with internationally renowned figures such as Francisco López, Hans-Cristoph Steiner, or Steve Heimbecker taking part in the theoretical Seminar.

The collaboration with Tom started a year ago, we met at Steim.
As a choreographer and director of multimedia theater performances I was busy investigating the possibilities of using the wii as a movement capture and use them to create a tool for fisiotheraphy and for sound installation inducing narratives and emotions.
My work with interactive sound installations had started years before at Steim (always forever Steim!!!!) with the islandic genius Ragnar Helgi Olafsson.
The evolving step to melt sound with the body as a choreographer come very natural.
And so the idea of a musical instrument based on a method which seeks to promote awareness of the human body as a powerful technological tool, which retains an innate capability to handle complex and elaborate informations.

One of the objectives in the development of W_space... is to allow learning practices to emerge, starting from direct and immediate results, which encourage the user to play with the instrument, to deeper, more elaborate, 'hidden' possibilities, achieved when learning the instrument / body.

It's a hands on project to develop a musical instrument that cuts away the distance between the human body and technological tools. The instrument become a body extention and makes the body more aware of its states of being.

Description of the research time at STEIM in February 2008:

It was a multidisciplinary research...thus my role as dramaturge and executive producer was to analize, bring in feed back and ideas and maintain track of the points where we were at and the various directions we could take from there. Not to mention the different targets each of us was interested in achieving. And last but not least the independent life and needs of the mapping system, which has a life of its own, to which sometimes we must submit while others we like to tame.
Taming became the word! the inspiration the red thread.
The awareness of the unescapable presence of hierarchy we had to deal with, between the system the instrument and the artistic goals, lead us to define the methodology and the focus of the research.
Ultimately hierarchy, the relationship between the programmer and the wearer as well as control were the 3 issues and concepts we based our research while learning more about the instrument.

Before starting I encountered an important issue: the one of control.
How much control the wearer needs to have on the instrument.
Tom didn't want the wearer to have control, but just to produce data by moving he would use to make sounds on the computer.
In my opinion or at least for my vision and project, in order to play the user-wearer had to know how to control it.
My target during the residency was to find ways or strategies about how to achieve it.
In that time at Steim it wasn't possible so in 4 months after, I wrote new concept studied and looked for places where we could find help in programming and engineering and that's when !bingo!! I stumpt in Medialab. And a new project was born W_space, thanks to the collaboration with: pix, jaime lobato, agnese mosconi, maria chiara paganini, francesca mereu, angela ramos, carlos panero, alyssa brakin, roberto moreno moya, leo soto.


W_Space

Se trata de un proyecto sonoro basado en un método que persigue motivar la atención sobre el cuerpo humano como potente arma tecnológica, capaz de manejar complejas y elaboradas informaciones de manera innata.

Uno de los objetivos es permitir prácticas que permitan emerjer profundas, elaboradas y "ocultas" posibilidades del cuerpo, partiendo de resultados directos e inmediatos que animen al usuario a jugar con el instrumento / cuerpo. El desarrollo de esta barata herramienta de captación de movimiento tipo "hágalo usted mismo" se basa en el sistema de control remoto de Wii de Nintendo, que puede permitir a los usuarios a utilizar su cuerpo para comunicar, crear y compartir estas experiencias íntimas de movimientos espaciales.

Este proyecto práctico desarrollará un instrumento musical que acorte la distancia entre el cuerpo humano y las herramientas tecnológicas. El instrumento se convertirá en una extensión del cuerpo que permita al propio cuerpo ser más consciente de sus estados.

Concept and Direction: Paola Tognazzi
Concept and music: Tom Tlalim
Master programming: Steven Pickles aka Pix
Colaboradores: Alyssa Brackin, Agnese Mosconi, Jaime Alonso Lobato Cardoso, Francesca Mereu, Maria Chiara Paganini, Carlos Panero, Ángela Ramos, Simon Dell, Roberto Moreno Moya.

W_space will be at Experimentaclub in la casa encendida till sunday 5 October 2008
Friday 3 October at 18.30 interview on television La Cuatro (dates when they will show it will be published soon)Live performances where we let the public use this instrument everyday from 19:00.Saturday and Sunday special performances with kids at LCE Madrid.Saturday 4 october 2008 interview on television TVE national spanish tv channel.On tuesday 7 October at 21.30 the project will be shown on television Localia channel.29.01.09 W_space @ Transmediale 09: A MAZE. JUMP’N RUN: BONUS CHEAT with great thanks to Flavio Escribano and Aniara Rodado.
For more informations
contact: ptognazzi@hotmail.com

http://medialab-prado.es/mmedia/1261/size/550
http://medialab-prado.es/article/list_of_selected_projects

I want to thanks especially Doron Hirsch.