soma

PROGRAMME NOTES from the director

The Soma Songs performance harnesses projected film with electronic sound within a site specific installation. The high-tech yet almost ritualist film material closely follows two human figures (dancers) and their exploration of form and geometry by way of construction. The first sequence describes collection of the raw building material, selection of stones, and then dividing these with sound into workable units. At a crucial point in the moving image the stone morphs into precisely cut geometric shapes. These forms, derived from the Soma Cube, become the key building blocks for architectural blueprints. A free-standing miniature structure is created with these units. We see the figures carefully measure and calculate the space as part of this process.

In the second sequence we sense that the figures work through a larger space. Everything in the choreography is pared back to the practical. Although choreographed and in itself clearly defined, this is not ‘dance' as we have come to expect it. We are structuring movement. The figures are focussed on shifting the large geometric building blocks. As they move these objects, the space changes dramatically. This in turn effects the light, and how the space is read from the audience viewpoint. A heightened sense of physicality, the effort and skill required in lifting, pushing, locking and unlocking, hinging, balancing, holding, pulling, sliding, cutting, stacking, and levering is evident - the physics of space illustrated in steps. Embedded in the moving image are aspects of ancient architecture, referencing Pythagoras and the Golden Section. The proportional system most associated with Greek architecture was termed the Golden Section.

The soundscape and performed projected movement is architectural and it follows along a slant in time, sharing a common logic which determines how they relate. Aspects of the sound are triggered by specific movements and actions from the figures. Sound heard in the opening sequence is developed into layered patterns and rhythms. As the choreography and space changes develop, the construction of a large version of the miniature structure built in the opening sequence takes form. Is this structure a shelter or a wall? Is it a device or a library - a means to navigate and travel – or a massive instrument to play sound? As the figures complete their building process the light changes quickly as if suddenly a code or key has been deciphered.

The final sequence implies the purpose of the arcane structure. Here the use of state of the art digital animation and effects adds a new layer of complexity and depth to the overall work. We see the human figures adjust the built structure, like fine tuning an engine. The space become alive with 3D animated line. Its as if we have the inside view of the structure - a blueprint. A visual and audial crescendo or finale is implied as geometric lines and patterns form and reform. We are exploring a resolution that is not a conceptual one alone. The sound and music dominates the image and we are left with a series of harmonics which associate with this architecture.

Rationale
Soma Songs can be defined in terms of how we project into, draw, mark out, and imprint our journeys on the world around us. Inwardly everything is archived in our cells. Our life journeys are recorded and coded into us as we create them. Our hands are like miniature maps. Like maps of the world everything changes with time. The palm of our hand accumulates, stores and transmits. The lines are rivers of energy.

The choreography and sound for this project can be seen as emerging like an archaeological excavation, and as a process of building and rebuilding. Clear spaces in the soundscape ‘stills' the filmed dance so that each segment completes itself with a tableaux. The intention is to convey a kind of unwrapping in this process. This can be related to the post modern concept of unpacking: going back into the object or its story and seeing it as the product of situations in culture.

Knowledge that is encoded in the memory of the body is remembered as real life experience. The value of 'hands on' learning and the knowledge grafted in this way is a correction or a balance to our current obsession with privileging theory, formula and method. As Picasso said in his cogent criticism of our fixation with research in art practice: "To find is the thing". (Interview with Marius de Zayas, 1927)

The mind may have ‘seen' but the human hand made manifest our civilisation and culture. It has created every tool from a simple hammer to the most sophisticated digital computer. With the aide of the hand, great ideas have been recorded which would otherwise have been lost to posterity. The exploration of outer space, as well as discoveries in microbiology, would not have been at all possible without the development of the hand-polished lens.

'In science today we are witnessing a general shift away from the assumption that the fundamental nature of matter can be considered from the point of view of substance (particles, quanta) to the concept that the fundamental nature of the material world is knowable only through its underlying patterns of wave forms. Both our organs of perception and the phenomenal world we perceive seem to be best understood as systems of pure pattern, or as geometric structures of form and proportion. Therefore, when many ancient cultures chose to examine reality through the metaphors of geometry and music (music being the study of the proportional laws of sound frequency), they were already very close to the position of our most contemporary science.' Robert Lawlor author of Sacred Geometry 1982

Context
In 2003 Daniel Belton and Donnine Harrison undertook extensive research and study in Europe towards the development of new work for audiences in New Zealand. During this time a restructuring and redefining of the ideas for Soma Songs took place. Moving image recordings of ancient architectural sites in Athens and the development of sound specific to this project in Amsterdam is intrinsically linked to our process. We would like to thank all the organisations and individuals who have helped make the Soma Songs project possible.

Additional Notes
There is embedded rhythm in all of the work for Soma Songs. The Soma Songs blocks in their flat two dimensional form are sound glyphs. They represent a musical notation system - tone links with alphabetical characteristic in code. Cubit sound. The digital glyphs have elements we associate with musical structures. The Soma Sound Glyphs take on the characteristics of music when they follow a linear trajectory, and a pattern is present. This can be circular or helix also. Inherent in this is the connection to the human body as glyph - human glyph. This is holographic and hieroglyphic in the context of motion.

The Tuning Forks are sound sabres for cutting, drilling, dividing the stone. The action of tapping them to produce a ringing tone, or gently drawing the fork across the stone surface creates subtle sound in the space. Two or more forks in use at one time enables a collage of harmonics and delicate sound frequencies. The sound of the Tuning Fork cutting the stone is like a revelation - a ringing. The sound is subtle, it implies. The human figures perform with the forks a kind of ‘toning' in the space. These actions and the resulting sound connect us to electromagnetic frequencies. It is within this system that the blueprint of the Soma Songs architecture resonates.

We are releasing form through sound and movement. Single forms to multiple. Cubes and radius cubes fusing and reforming. At times the shadows become so soft that the structures look spectral as if hewn by the light. There are distortions where the light bleaches everything - as if the structures are descending from light - and there are moments when they appear weightless. The gaps and spaces set up by the cut stone blocks augment the Soma Songs Glyphs. They signal the incoming geometry for the entry of new forms in the work.

'Geometry and mathematics, coupled with planetary and star knowledge, are the basis for the construction of dimensional doorways. Knossos on the island of Crete, Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid, the Acropolis, Delphi, Machu Picchu, Tiahuanaco, and many others serve as doorways to other dimensions. These structures, built through the use of sacred geometry, totally confound present-day science. Light can create certain distortions in realities, and in order to work with light one must bend geometry. What is missing in modern-day architecture is the combination of light and geometry. In other words, the influence of light on the third-dimensional form is not taken into consideration. Your buildings collapse because light is not factored in when they are built. After a while they erode or are destroyed, even if there is no war going on. The ancients who lived on this planet built libraries of a very different nature than you build today. Prior to building temples, tribal wizards and leaders of certain cultures journeyed to places that were known to have a special stone. This stone was cleansed and prepared to hold data and information that would be transmitted telepathically from peoples minds into the stone structures. A form such as a temple was designed, and the builders used the natural geomancy and energy flow of a location to store the total of what they knew into the very stone of the construction. Information was stored in stone and bone, with stone being the bones of the Earth. Most civilisations have stored data in stone. Stories were built into the stone structures that were tempered and fed with sound. Earth is alive and holds knowledge. How do you access this knowledge? A form of communication that can free you from the traditional interpretations is toning, the process of allowing sound to move through you, playing you like an instrument. Toning is a key to releasing stored knowledge.' Earth, Pleiadian Keys to the Living Library. Barbara Marciniak 1994

The opening sequence shows an outdoor natural site rich in Limestone, being explored by the human figures. It is ritualistic and open. There is excavation and probing in this search for the raw material, the right stone which will become the subject of our work. We viewed the stone as volumes of light - and therefore we are building with light.

'Cutting the Stone: the line cannot be taken back. The cut is a parting. The worn surface of the stone wears a history of frictions, of successive weatherings and, sometimes, the trace of deliberate use. The cut face, however, is clean - a new beginning. The cut allows stone to be set cheek by cheek with other cut stone. A stack of cut stones will build into a column. Spanned columns divide space; here from there; inside from outside. Threshold. the greatest virtue in stone is its behaviour under compression. Stone shoulders enormous load. We trace our stories of architecture from the first attempts to capture and hold space with stone. No doubt there was a prehistory of building with wood and hides, with leaves and grasses, but the evidence of these is to be found only in transmitted practices. The skeletons of stone structures have sat with us for millennia. The prime function of built architecture was to provide an umbrella of shelter, not only from natures elements, but from the terror of mysteries unexplained. The umbrella of shelter defined a culture and a society. Temples were built to endure surrounding change. They were to define and keep identity stable. Stone is more stable than wood, and more enduring than iron.' Peter Belton 2004

The human element is constantly distorted in movement against the fixed, solid objects. The fabric of existence is malleable. We jump from flat space to the idea that there is time inside the space as well. You go into the still image and suddenly you are in 3D space. There is pulse in the line - the line is active - and the dance geometric. Why do we build? What do we want to broadcast? ‘The wisdom is physiological'.

We trace our stories of architecture from the first attempts to capture and hold space with stone. The skeletons of stone structures have sat with us for millennia. In Soma Songs our work focuses on the relationship between movement and moving image, both when it is produced as a result of a choreography for the camera, and when it is produced by the filmmaker's look on movement. The dance is moving geometry - movement is the basic datum.

Architectural rhythm is read by scanning the surfaces of planes, as in scanning a musical score, reading the patterns the notes make in time. When you set up a curve, you set up a rhythm, and again, this is about movement. The curve signals rotation. There is more length on the curved surface than a flat surface which therefore implies acceleration - accelerated movement. Curves also signify returned movement. Light is both wave and particle. In Soma Songs we conduct this energy and its resulting memory. Light has a consciousness. Geometric forms affect us because there is consciousness in the form.

Polarities of dark and light, of contraction and expansion; the ways light affects us, and the way we engage the edges of light create those liminal zones at the edge of understanding and knowing. We are on the edge of shadow when we engage in the architecture of light. Its spaces and forms come alive when given the pulse of human presence. Reflections and refractions happen in response to shifts in frequency of light and colour. The synaesthetic event happens when these are synchronised with sound.

‘People are by nature phototropic - they move toward light ' Christopher Alexander

The concept of numbers and the development of mathematics has enabled description of our world, and our understanding of the Universe. We recognise pattern in repetitions, alterations, inversions and in reflected or returned moments so that; ‘ordered movement lies at the heart of our universe, as it lies at the heart of the atom. It is this permanent and all-pervasive state of motion, from the pulse of our blood to the circling of the planets, which places us as dancing figures in a dancing Universe' (Clark and Crisp. The History of Dance 1981)

‘The space that surrounds us is as positive a visual factor as the forms that exist within it. While we commonly think of space as negative - an invisible emptiness or void - we know that it is in fact charged with energies, and contains particles of very real matter. From experience we know that it can support great weights, push hard, and feel as solid as a rock. Space may be considered on different scale levels, each containing its own structural systems of matter and its own patterns of motion. There is space within the atom - one level within the world scale - where the distance from the outer limits to the centre is relatively many times greater than the distance from the earth to our sun. There is also a ‘human scale' of space in nature, although our concepts are rapidly changing as we move at ever increasing speed through space, and distances shrink. On this scale there is a need for organisation of space, in a psychological and emotional sense - space between ourselves and other people, space between our bodies and the walls and the objects around us. The proper proportioning of space is necessary for the full and wholesome development of the human organism' Visual Design 1967, Lillian Garrett