Séminaire Liberté en création du 14 octobre

Dixième séance, English session, du séminaire Langarts dirigé par Zélia et Isaac CHUEKE, et KIM Hyeon-Suk : vendredi 14 octobre de 10h00 à 13h00. Programme : “Semiotics of creativity : the case of digital special effects in cinema” par Kristian Bankov et “Taiko and japanese culture” par Juliana Saemi Murakami. Contact : liberteencreation@gmail.com. Prochaine séance : 18 novembre 2022.

Télécharger l’affiche : Liberte en creation. 10e seance-Langarts 2

Semiotics of creativity : the case of digital special effects in cinema
 Kristian BANKOV

I will develop a reflection on how the standards of creativity are changing with the development of new entertainment technologies and the digital special effects in particular. For theoretic framework I will use a fundamental divide which already Bergson introduced in his phenomenology form Matter and Memory (1896), namely the definition of the two types of memory – the sensorimotor memory of the habit and the pure memory of the episodic images. Perception of films has always been considered as an embodied experience, but it is quite obvious that today the major effort of the mainstream cinema productions is the quest for verisimilitude in visual and audio effects. Such verisimilitude has much to do with the sensorimotor habits of perception than with other more complex socio cultural “memorized” competencies, typical for the pre-digital interpretative cooperation between authors and spectators. Today Robert Zemeckis may claim that “Technology raises the level of your work as a director, in that it allows you to do anything. The only limit now is the filmmaker’s imagination, because you can literally create any image.”, but following the above analysis it seems that in fact the freedom in filmmaker’s creativity today is lower than before because of the very high costs of productions, demanded by the spectators’ expectations.

Kristian BANKOV (b. 1970) is a Professor of Semiotics at New Bulgarian University, visiting Professor at Sichuan University, editor-in-chief of the journal Digital Age in Semiotics and Communication, and has served as Director of the Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies since 2007. In 2014 he was elected as the Secretary General of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS). His interest in semiotics began during the early nineties when he was studying in Bologna, following the courses of Umberto Eco and Ugo Volli. He has taught semiotics courses at New Bulgarian University since 1995. In 2000 he defended his PhD in Helsinki with Eero Tarasti. In 2006 he became an Associate Professor of Semiotics, and was promoted to Professor in 2011. His major interests are in the semiotics of new media and digital culture, sociosemiotics, identity, consumer culture, and semiotics of money. He has written four books and more than one hundred articles in Bulgarian, English, and Italian.

Taiko and japanese culture
 Juliana Saemi MURAKAMI

Wadaiko (和太鼓) is the specific term in Japanese defining the traditional drum of ancient origin. Its translation is literally ‘big Japanese drum’ considering that the first ideogram Wa (和) is a prefix that refers to everything that belongs to Japan’s culture or country as can also be found in terms such as Wagashi (traditional Japanese candy), Washitsu (room with Japanese aesthetics), Wafuku (traditional Japanese clothing), etc. The most popular term referring to to the drum is Taiko (太鼓). Due to its physical composition and shape it has the capacity for much reverberation and intense sound propagation and the modern style of taiko playing that is worked on my research is the Kumidaiko (組太鼓). Focusing thus on musical and artistic practice, it is a style which rhythmic pieces require technical and physical preparation from the performer, besides choreography, facial and vocal expressions. It was possible to explore ways of sound combination among the various taiko timbres as well as to create pieces mixing with non-Japanese instruments, in a merge of aesthetics and other musical structures. As a support we used the works of researchers Ana Luisa Fridman and Rogério Luiz Moraes Costa who contribute with an approach of the relations established between  a music of European tradition and with the musical practices of Oriental cultures. We can read in “Diversity from dialogues with non-Western music: report of concluded research”: As such, we suggest that the idea of sound itself behind all musical doings (including genres and systems constructed through these doings) is what enables recombination, re-signifying and hybridism between diverse expressive materials, musical doings and procedures.(FRIDMAN and COSTA, 2014, p.8). Considering the western opening in learning processes and musical practice, we bring to this presentation to display the practice of the taiko in other performance contexts (as when associated with western instruments), we also cover technical issues of formats, material composition as well as types of sound production and philosophies applied mainly to performance practice not forgetting cultural issues linked to Japanese culture. 

Juliana Saemi MURAKAMI Juliana Saemi Murakami, born in Japan, raised in Brazil, learned first the piano, her principal instrument nowadays being the taiko. Early on influenced by Japanese music, she holds a Bachelor in Music Production from Universidade Federal do Paraná besides being a certificated teacher of taiko by Nippon Taiko Zaidan, she is also a member of the band Wakaba Taiko based in Curitiba. In 2019 she began her career as a Taiko performer by participating in the show ‘Sons Nikkei’ alongside guitarist João Egashira and pianist Lilian Nakahodo. Presently developping her Master’s degree at Unespar under the guidance of Dr. Isaac Felix Chueke, her dissertation concentrates on the exploration of sound and combination-insertion of taikos in the realm of the sonority deployed by the modern western orchestra. Since 2020 she has been an active member of the research group “Estudos e Prática da Música dos séculos XX e XXI” at UFPR – Universidade Federal do Paraná.

Véronique Journeau Alexandre

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