IMPROVISING_CYBORGS

Join me by the window!

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My name is Winta, and this is my portfolio for AME333, Improvising Cyborgs. Here you can find selections of performances I’ve chosen to be examples of my progress throughout the course. My goal is to highlight my transformation as a student of AME333, and to showcase and conclude my coursework.

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Week 15, December 4th, 2024

This was our final performance. We performed a multi-modal piece about a failed final performance. It’s aim was to convince the audience that the performance was real, as in, that everything we did was genuine and not in performance. The concept was aiming to be meta. We first had myself come in late to create tensions and frusturation within the group. Then, as me and my groupmate enact a (failed) puppet show, we get exasperated with our groupmates who are conducting the visual and audio effects because they’re not “what we rehearsed”. This then breaks out into bickering and fighting, and we all, out of frustration, break off and go to our individual stations. One of the group mates makes a rallying call to get us back together, trying to create cohesion again. We all somewhat ignore them and start making audio/visual effects at our stations. Another groupmate makes it known that, hey, we still need to figure out this group performance, so we start to brainstorm at the whiteboard. We use the whiteboard as an audio sound board, clicking and banging on the board as we draw and write. After some time, a groupmate sort of has a epiphany and proposes that we do a group performance on a failed group performance. And this queues the end of the performance.

The performance itself went according to plan. We rehearsed it once before this, just a couple hours prior to the final performance. If im being honest, I wasn’t very proud of this performance. I don’t think it showcased the full extent of abilities, which I am bummed about, but can only blame myself for. But I also acknowledge that this idea came from an earnest place, and that this is where me and my group mates were at in this time and place in our lives. We were hoping to capture the frustration we felt weeks up to the final performance—having constant scheduling issues, having some group mates put in more effort than others, everyone having a hard time coming up with a vision, apathy, hesitation, and just the end of the semester fatigue. I think this performance is unique considering these conditions. I’m proud of it in that regard, that we were all able to come together and perform something in earnest, not in jest.

Link to the full video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NP4bYZeLLBaq9DXS5B_DNKvBDhT1QbVo/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NP4bYZeLLBaq9DXS5B_DNKvBDhT1QbVo/view?usp=drivesdk

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Week 14, December 25th, 2024

After our failed group final performance, we were back to brainstorming. Nothing was resonating with us. We had no “message” or theme or, really, anything we wanted to collectively perform. Generally, for myself, I was feeling nothing, nothingness, from my life, and didn’t have anything I wanted to communicate. A block. There was no direction, which was troubling for a story-line based performance. I was frustrated, as were many of my groupmates. Nearing the second hour of our brainstorm, one of my group mates proposed we do a group performance on how we can’t come up with a group performance. It resonated with everyone, and we decided to proceed with that idea.

Here are some of the BTS pictures of the brainstorm session.

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Week 13, November 20th, 2024

We’re in the final stretch of the course. In these video stills, we were doing a full run through of our final group performance. In many aspects, it didn’t succeed. There wasn’t much cohesion. We went back to the drawing board after this performance.

The link to the video can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-0lzg3h6FKi6RLtjJK96EN3y6tzQEWzM/view?usp=drivesdk

Week 13, November 20th, 2024

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Week 9, October 23rd, 2024

We’ve arrived at the ninth week of the course. We were past the half-way point in the semester. I was feeling comfortable in my understanding of improvisational performing, particularly with my small number of group mates. We were experimenting with combining visual and audio elements together in this performance. My group mate built a MAX patch that made for some cool audio outputs, and my other group mate brought in a hand-made circuit board that also made for some cool audio!! In our first go, I was on a midi that controlled the delay and X Y Z planes of the visuals. I also controlled the volume of my other group mates who were producing audio. This performance was, by far, my most favourite of the course. It was here that i began to develop a taste for the style and elements I enjoyed in an improvisation performance.

I’ve provided some stills from the taped performance. For the link to videos: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1--fQ-ZLiJezhbJldqH9OtdidCRyhiEdc/view?usp=drivesdk ,

WEEK 9, OCTOBER 23rd, 2024

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Week 3, September 11th, 2024

This is one of my earliest performances. I’m accompanied with two other classmates as we perform a method of music-making called “Click and Sustain.”

This method consists of “clicking”, where we repeatedly make a small, singular sound at any pace we like. This is partnered by a “sustain”, where us practitioners inhale as deeply as possible and play on our sustained exhale. We used found objects as our instruments, and attempted to find a cohesive flow. This, of course, was all improvised, which made it difficult to find unison in our combined elements. I began to ask the question: what does it mean to respond to one another? What does it mean to improvise successfully?