Choreography and Composition of Internal Time

John MacCallum & Teoma Naccarato
Musical research project - Sept. December 2014, IRCAM

The composer John MacCallum and choreographer Teoma Naccarato propose a collaborative project that examines the use of real-time, heart rate data from contemporary dancers to drive a polytemporal composition for instrumental ensemble with live electronics.

During this musical research residency, they will develop and expand robust software tools that facilitate the composition and performance of polytemporal work, in which tempos are driven by real-time interaction—in the case of our project, heart rates of dancers ; and examine strategies for heart rate manipulation via internal and external stimuli, including entrainment between bodily processes and music.

Designing a facile environment within which to explore this type of compositional and performative complexity will bring together a number of current research interests at IRCAM including recent developments in Antescofo, OpenMusic, and gesture following, as well as extensive work on polytemporal music conducted by MacCallum at CNMAT.

⇒ Project presentation [video]
⇒ Ircam residency "exit seminar" [video]
⇒ [project website]

Performances:

• Study #2 for dancer, percussion, and live electronics. SwarmLab Annual Retreat at UC Berkeley (June, 5th, 2015).