This presentation outlines a series of collaborative explorations of gesture in the respective practices of the two authors: a guitarist and a composer. First we discuss how, in Go To Hell (a multi-media work set in in a decommissioned nuclear reactor), the choreography, musical materials, video works and a sound- and light installation were all created from the move- ment data in a performance of Rolf Riehm’s Toccata Orpheus for guitar. The second and third examples explore the generation of instrumental techniques from the starting point of an instrument’s inherent physical and spatial configuration in two works by David Gorton: Capriccio for solo cello and Forlorn Hope for eleven-string alto guitar. The final example con- siders the role of gesture in the communication of structure, shape, and expression in a per- formance of David Gorton’s Austerity Measures I for ten-string guitar. A performance of this piece requires increasing amounts of material to be replaced with silence across a number of repetitions, resulting in shifting structural functions of the composed material. Hence, is a performance, the the structural shaping is highlighted. In a study of qualitative and quan- titative data, together with researchers from IPEM in Gent, we identify strong links between physical gesture and musical structures. The presentation will include a live performance of the piece by Stefan Östersjö.

Inventions du geste musical / Inventing Gestures

In recent years, musicological study of gesture has become an important emerging field of inquiry. Video and motion capture technologies, modes of analysis borrowed from other arts (such as the Laban method for movement analysis in dance) as well as new systems and notations for describing the movement of performers, have allowed a wide variety of approaches to study the structure and expressive potential of gesture. In parallel, the study of composer-performer collaboration has become a leading research field, with musicologists, performers and composers all contributing multiple perspectives with the aid of modern ethnographic techniques. What can our study of collaborative processes reveal about the creation of new approaches to gesture? Featuring artists and researchers examining the performance of canonical works as well as examining the creation of new works today, this symposium explores whether the precise mode and location of the genesis of new gestural approaches can be identified. The use of technology to both augment the composition and allow the performer new methods of control, the integration of elements of theatre and dance and the exploration of new extended techniques will all be particular foci for the presentations. By examining collaborative approaches to gestural innovation, a deeper understanding of both fields can be uncovered, opening new avenues of artistic and musicological research.