Yukao Nagemi (Christian Jacquemin)

Whereas music is “by essence” performative, drawing has been mostly shown as a finished work until the mid 20th century. Under the influence of visual artists revealing embodied and performative practices of drawing such as William Anastasi or Robert Morris, and dancers and choreographers producing graphical traces through their dance such as Trisha Brown or Teresa De Keersmaeker, performative drawing has established itself as an art practice that can reveal multiple facets of the drawing act: embodiment, narration, situation…

The main topic of my presentation is to highlight how performative drawing can use the relationship between visual arts and music (from Kandinsky to the experimental cinema of Fishinger or Mc Laren) to compose and interprete live graphico-musical performance. Based on my personal practice in this domain, I will illustrate how digital processes can be used both to augment the performative graphical expression, and to offer the visual and musical expressions a melting pot in which graphical and musical performance combine into a novel and singular form of art.

During my presentation, I will give some hints about the tool that I have developed for my drawing practice (porphyrograph), its architecture, its control, its main features, and, more specifically, its connection with either sound analysis, or MIDI and OSC events. I also wish to highlight the multiple ways through which the creation process can take place, depending on the theme and the context of the work, the practice of the composer or musician, the temporality… I will also describe how the process develops over time through listening and watching, through verbal and non-verbal communication, through improvisation and/or composition, and through a posteriori art productions such as video clips. Last I will present some of my current artistic research: the mixing of physical and digital painting on the ground, the use of inertial sensors for trajectory reconstruction, the vectorization of video combined with realtime postproduction, and the possibilities offered by associating dance, music, and videoprojected live graphics.

To make the presentation more lively, in addition to video excerpts, I will also show a few illustrative demos, and allocate time for exchange with the participants. Please, do not hesitate to send me links, or bring suggestions of works or practices, that you would like to propose for the discussion time.