Kasper Toeplitz & Myriam Gourfink (FR/PL): DATA_Noise

Modern Body Festival proudly presents the Dutch premiere of DATA_Noise!

DATA_Noise is a mixed media live performance by composer Kasper T. Toeplitz and choreographer Myriam Gourfink in which the moving body is seen as another musician/instrument, albeit a silent one. Or perhaps not so silent. In fact, at times a very noisy one. The piece is conceived as an electronic musical composition, to be played in real-time, by a musician playing a computer, whose music-making function is disturbed by a dancer, whose body, equipped with sensors, works extremely slowly and meticulously through a precise choreography, producing the “data-noise” which is meant to perturb the sometimes too-perfect actions of the computer.

DATA_Noise was awarded the Giga-Hertz Prize (ZKM, Karlsruhe) for Dance and Multimedia.

Concept, music, programming: Kasper T. Toeplitz
C
horeography, dance: Myriam Gourfink
Photographs © Marc Coudrais

Mixed media performance

Date
3 Dec

Time
20:30-21:30

Venue
De Nieuwe Regentes
Grote Zaal

Module
Performance

Links
Kasper Toeplitz
Myriam Gourfink

BIOS

Kasper Toepitz & Myriam Gourfink (by Peggy Kaplan)

As a composer and electric bass player, Kasper Toeplitz (FR/PL) has developed a body of work in the no-man’s-land between “academic” composition (orchestra, ensembles, opera), electronic music, and sheer noise. Known for collaborating with such unclassificable musicians as Zbigniew Karkowski, Dror Feiler, Art Zoyd, Eliane Radigue, Phill Niblock and Ulrich Krieger, Toeplitz makes use of the computer both as a real instrument and as a tool for reflecting on music differently, transforming the musical parameters of pitch data and temporality. He has created works for radio and electronic studios such as IRCAM, GRM and GMEM. Some of Toeplitz’s awarded distinctions and prizes include 1st prize for orchestral composition at the Besancon Festival, 1st prize at the “Opera autrement / centre Acanthes” competition, Villa Medicis Hors les Murs (New York), grant Leonardo da Vinci (San Francisco), Villa Kujoyama (Kyoto), DAAD (Berlin), Hors les murs (Poland), Giga Hertz Prize (ZKM, Karlsruhe), Ars Elecrtronica (Linz).

Myriam Gourfink (FR) is known for her extremely unusual writing, based on Kinetography Laban, as well as her close connection with contemporary music and new digital technologies. Her dance is essentially infused with yoga and her experience as a performer (particularly with Odile Duboc). A leading figure in choreographic research in France, she has also been guest at numerous international festivals (springdance in NYC, Künsten Arts festival in Brussels, Festival de la Bâtie in Geneva, the Danças Na Cidade festival in Lisbon), and has been artist in residence at IRCAM, the National Fresnoy-studio for Contemporary Arts, the Forum de Blanc-Mesnil and Micdanses. From 2008-2013 she was director of the Program for Choreographic Research and Composition (PRCC) at the Royaumont Foundation. The performances she creates require extreme physical control resulting in a strange but boundless beauty. Every movement, every look, every breath is meticulously pre-determined to the millimetre, while the dancer’s body moves along a continuous, measured and fascinating path.