The Final selection of the cd music tracks is going to include the following pieces by

-Massimo Botter (Sedna) for baritone sax solo

-Monique Jean (Ricochets) for tenor saxophone and Live Electronic

-Rodrigo Sigal (Limite) for alto sax and tape

-Luigi Pizzaleo (Meridiano) for soprano-alto-baritone sax and live electronic

-Elainie Lillios (Veiled Resonance) for soprano sax and Electronic

-Frederic Chiasson (La Lame de l’horizon) for alto sax solo

Having pre-decided either upon form or a plan on which to base the evolution of the piece, we use improvisation, focusing on the communication and interaction between fellow players, so that each and every time a different version of the piece is produced.

We are looking for artists active in such diverse fields as (but not limited to): electroacoustics, live electronics, instrumental improvisation, performance art, composers, creative computer programming, creative hardware modification/circuit-bending, conceptual art, drama.

Ranging in styles from electroacoustic music to free Jazz, ethnic and Fusion.

The ideal participants would have interdisciplinary interests and a strong creative drive. They would be happy to share and embrace ideas, techniques, material, time and energy. They would need good social and communication skills, as well as the ability to function in a wide range of situations. A respect to the craft and the powers of improvisation is a must.

The psychological swings of the characters are of utmost importance to this play, and Medea’ s dilemma is repositioned on the moral-immoral, fair-unfair axes, given today’ s different circumstances. The modern day Medea, has different experiences in many domains. She has been listening to different music, has memories of televised wars, Reuters’ pictures in her mind. Recorded, radiophone sounds are reproduced in parallel to her inner voice, making the latter indiscernible. Bits of Audiovisual information fly around her head affecting her judgment.

The play is in many ways diversified from a classic  Euripides Medea. In terms of content, plot, presentation and rigidity. It is largely relies on Interactive technology to create a dynamic environment where visual and sonic data of the performance are continuously processed and re-imported  into the play.

It was first presented at the Benaki Museum in April 2007

Using Kavafis’ Monotonia and Vaneigem’s The revolution of everyday life as departure points – these two components become the very foundation for an audiovisual sculpture performance intended to illustrate the above theme. By deconstructing monotony as a word meaning: lack of variety and interest, tedious repetition and routine; this is translated into a cycle of events. The components are: illusion, obstruction, liminality and condition. Each and one of these have individual characteristics and are acted out differently and are not bound to any specific order but are instead used to identify and create certain sets of scenarios. The intention here is to suggest that monotony very much is in the very eye of the beholder and that a monotony for one might be an interruption for another.

We live in a universal condition, forcing upon us a state of liminality. Liminal actions and thoughts define our everyday actions of apathy; “The same things will happen again, and then will happen again, the same moments will come and go”.

We have followed that condition in our own accord, choosing the easy path and limiting our self in a confined social environment. An environment based on exclusions and social definitions serving the condition we live in.

‘Fake’ illusions of achievable materialistic goals lead to a cycle of events creating a monotonous life pattern. Commercial life style, big restaurant chains, artificial goods and faux-tech hope for a better future structured on a pyramid of materials made with pain in the third world to be consumed painlessly in the west.

The condition serves the few who belong in the system; a system of social exclusions and secluded environments, The condition has a ritualistic way of defining its purpose. It takes ownership of human behavior and controls its decisions.

‘Forbidden’ illusions are the only hope we have in our society, waiting to be awakened by obstructions. These are illusions made in childhood defining our future dreams. Dreams that where oppressed by the condition we live in.

Childhood dreams made in a fantasy world with no boundaries and with harmless intentions. “Monotonia” strives to bring back to life these illusions. It is the remembrance of a world we once fantasized, unpolluted from the materialistic world we live in.

We are waiting for these obstructions of the system to take us by the hand and move us away from the condition we live in. Obstructions are loud, forceful actions of events reacting to the conditional social system we live in. Obstructions are the inner voices; Socrates demon as he describes in his Apologia; a revo- lutionary force aiming to awaken us from our condition. They appear to us as Faces; images that call us to remember our childhood illusions and restructure our path in life. An obstruction is a scream for hope, a rebellion, a fight, a reassurance that a different future exists.

“Monotonia” does not aim to set itself against the society we live in but for the people who are trapped in this condition. We aim to break our personal monotonous cycle of events. We strive to find a new hypothesis of how social environments can survive in a modern society of different behaviors, cultural backgrounds, needs and dreams.

MedeaElectronique organizes Koumaria Mixed Media Art Residency in the fall offering a week’s retreat for media artists in rural Sparta, Greece.
At the foot of Mount Taigetos, a huge private olive garden will be transformed into a laboratory for contemporary art. Offering a 400 square meter residency made into a modern mixed media art studio, we aim to bring together artists of different disciplines in order to develop a collective mixed media art project.

We are interested in the process itself, as a hypothesis and as an experiment in the search for an emerging work ethic, as an intense and refreshing experience that will serve as a model for future creative gatherings.

We examine the older, past century buildings that survived (not intact of course) the cruel cannibalism of modern urban “development”.  Buildings that nowadays are left to rot under the unbearable weight of overlapping layers of dust and time. We document and explore the relations between the obvious structural decay of the habitat and the degree of influence that this decay has on the people living in it. Not in a scientific or philosophical way, but in a more simple first level aestheticist way, concentrating on their appearance, external colors, eye sight direction and maybe mood… That is of course related to “scientific or philosophical” related variables, but we’ll not deal with this either here or now… Nevertheless, we can’t hide our sadness and rage about it. What for others might be a settled everyday situation, to us is an unacceptable non stop insult to our dignity both emotional and spiritual. We experience striking events and strong emotional stimuli during our day-to-day life, so for us telling stories about these experiences and sharing these emotions through live performance is a crucial artistic approach, as well as a strong need for a cathartic release.

Finding the most interesting and powerful path that would combine our individual mediums for expression was just a part of the creative process. We concentrate on collection of materials on-site, studio creation and manipulation, structured improvisation and rehearsals. We want and need this project to be as direct and as “perception-of-our-own-reality” accurate as possible. We use the following tools and creative methods to achieve this:

- Live Cinema techniques that involve live editing / mixing between live and prerecorded footage

- Live Electroacoustic music created through manipulation of prerecorded and generated elements

- Live Painting on a variety of materials while operating a video camera

Case of Emergency is not intended to dictate or insinuate wise solutions or attribute responsibilities or blames. Case of Emergency is to portray, communicate and so comment on a sequence of evocative real life events, for people to see and maybe think through virtually experiencing it. This is our side of the story; this is our slice of contemporary life…

From Athens with Love

MedeaElectronique