Bodycoder - Julie Wilson-Bokowiec - Mark Bokowiec - Interactive Performance

Collaboration

Instigated in 1994, Bodycoder is the brain-child of Mark and Julie Bokowiec. The Bodycoder is a powerful and unique interactive performance system centring on the body and the live and gestural manipulation of sound, sound processing and sometimes image manipulation through live interaction with a range of technologies. Our work is sonically immersive and visually theatrical.

Environment

Our work is largely made in response to the environments in which we find ourselves enmeshed. We are drawn to untamed places, ancient landscapes and deep cultural practices, finding synergies and conversations between ecologies, native species ontologies and our cyborg process.
Many of our recent works have been made in residencies in Greece, others in Iceland, PEI Nova Scotia, Northern Canada and the Netherlands.
Our home studio is in the county of Yorkshire in the North of England.

Performance

We regularly present work at international festival and digital arts venues; in galleries, concert halls and in site-specific environments. Our work is sonically immersive (we use a surround, multi-channel speaker system) and highly theatrical. We foreground performance and the aesthetic language of interaction, rather than the technological means that underpin our practice.

with supported from
Arts Council of England * British Council (Touring) * Banff Centre (Artist Bursary award) * STIEM Amsterdam (Artist Bursary award) * Confederation Arts Centre * MATLab Athens * Onasis STEGI * IRCAM Paris * indirectly various EU Culture funds

HEXIS (2019) is the third in a cycle of works that explore the synergies between ancient motifs and our own distinct form of sonic mediation. The first and second pieces being V’Oct(Ritual) (2014) created in residency in the final days of Dartington College of Arts, Totnes UK and PythiaDelphine21 (2016) created in residence in Athens and premiered at the International Animart Festival in Delphi, Greece.

Hexis (2019)

Onassis STEGI, Athens - ImproTec Festival

HEXIS is a Greek word that stems from a verb related to ‘possession’ and refers to a ‘state’ of being: an ‘active condition’ or disposition that becomes a deeply embodied way of being. For us hexis describes a way of being in performance. Our piece Hexis (2019) is thematically inspired by and draws upon Heraclitus’ river-analogy ‘one cannot step twice into the same river’ and for ‘as they step into the same rivers, different and (still) different waters flow upon them’. These ideas configure man’s state of being in relation to and as a part of nature. The river is an example of that which preserves structural identity while undergoing constant change of content, and it is this conflagration of unity/divergence, formation and dissolution, of the catching, touching and trickling away of substance that has informed our piece.

Video footage: Jeff Jolly @popmyfilms.

PythiaDelphine21
(2016/18)

Evoking the essence of the ancient practice of the Delphic Oracle, old technology meets new in this re-animation of the performer/pythia as medium, mediator, instigator, vessel and author of digital and analogue transmutations.

Gender specific vocal registers are wilfully subverted and fractured, extended vocal techniques and ethnic modes of vocalisation make available unusual acoustic resonances that spiral into new acoustic and physical trajectories full of fluid pluralities, evolving sonic entities, transient characters, choric commentators, beasts and mythical fauna and flora.

Moss Arts Centre, Blacksberg Virginia, June 2018

Delphi, Greece July 2016 (premiere) Museum of Delphic Festivals

V'Oct(Ritual)

V'Oct(Ritual) at the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens. Greece

V'Oct(Ritual) at the Betang, Oslo, Norway

V'Oct(Ritual) at BEAM Festival, London

The Vox Circuit Trilogy

The Suicided Voice * Hand-to-Mouth * Etch

The Suicided Voice (compilation of performances)

Early works 1995 - 2007 (compilation)

Cyborg Dreaming - commission for The Wellcome Wing - Science Museum London

BODYCODER - in the beginning

Julie Wilson-Bokowiec and MARK BOKOWIEC began working together in a recording studio setting in 1988. A year later they started to explore and experiment with a range of hardware solutions for live interaction in performance. They teamed up with Dawsons Music, Roland and Rank Strand (lighting) to help create and beta test a range of new technologies including Strand's new midi lighting desks. In 1994 they premiered The Navigator: a large-scale full length theatrical work that featured a range of interactive sound and image technologies that together created a 'sensitized' performance space. The Navigator also included a number of interactive instruments. A year later they embarked on a significant program of work that would transplant stage technologies (developed for The Navigator) onto the body of the performer. This resulted in the first generation of the BODYCODER SYSTEM. At the beginning of the VJ revolution, Mark and Julie were invited to Beta test Steinberg's (Archaos) new VJ software <Xpose> in conjunction with the Bodycoder System. In 1995 they presented the first performance with the new system in an evening of new works: THE ANATOMY CLASS.

1995 - 2007:
Since 1995 Mark and Julie have created a large and significant body of interactive digital performance works with the Bodycoder System, including Zeitgeist & Lifting Bodies, Cyborg Dreaming, Spiral Fiction, The Vox Circuit Trilogy (2007). These and other works have been performed in London, Montreal, Quebec, PEI Nova Scotia, Banff Centre for the Arts Alberta, Budapest, Oslo, and venues in Italy and Greece. They have received commissions from the Science Museum London, the Traffo Theatre Budapest and the Hungarian Computer Music Association and Wakefield City Art Galleries among others. They were Artists-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts and STEIM Amsterdam, and their work has been supported by the Arts Council of England and The British Council.

"I just watched the Vimeo of V'Oct(Ritual) and it really is quite beautiful! I love the way it unfolds... dreamlike...like clouds slowly passing by...then out to space...it's got that shaman's trance feel to it, shades of Ligeti and Arvo Part, with a delicate ethereal quality. Julie Wison-Bokowiec looks superb, sounds amazing, I love the subtle gestures and evocative vocalization, you really feel it! It's amazing how she sounds ancient and modern at the same time, evoking the primitive whilst signalling the cosmos. I like the vari-speed/pitch shift type thing you use towards the end and the low deep-core voicing" (Julius Vasylenko - Saxophonist)

The Bodycoder is a SYSTEM not an instrument. The system comprises of hardware, software (on and off the body) interfaces, image and sound diffusion, but also the presence of flesh and blood: the tangible and sensual relationship and long term collaboration between two artists - always in relationship to time and the spaces in which they work. In performance, the work is responsive and sensitive to the presence of an audience for whom the work is enacted and who being part of the performance environment are therefore enmeshed within the relationship/dialogue/interaction. Our work with the Bodycoder System is both a response to, a relationship with, and a becoming within a techno-physical environment. We consider our work to be CYBERNETIC in the broadest sense of the term. Our work reflects and manifests the operation of being within our particular techno-ecological environment.

Publications:

Wilson-Bokowiec, J. 2012. Future voices of digital opera: re-imagining the diva. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. Special Issue: Digital Opera. Vol 8 (1): 79-92. Intellect Books. UK

Wilson-Bokowiec, J. 2010. Physicality: the technik of the physical in interactive digital performance. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. Vol 4 (1): 61-75. Intellect Books. UK

Wilson-Bokowiec, J., & Bokowiec, M. 2009. Sense & Sensation: the act of mediation and its effects. Intermedialities (Histore et theorie des arts, des letters et des techniques) Vol 12: 124 – 144. Montreal: CRI University of Montreal.

Wilson-Bokowiec, J., & Bokowiec, M,. 2006. Kineasonics: The Intertwining Relationship of Body and Sound. Contemporary Music Review. Special Issue: Bodily Instruments and Instrumental Bodies. 25 (1+2): 47-58. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

Wilson-Bokowiec, J., & Bokowiec, M,. 2003. Spiral Fiction. Organised Sound. Special Issue: Interactive Performance. 8(3): 279-287. In association with the International Computer Music Association. Cambridge University Press.
Wilson-Bokowiec, J,. & Bromwich, M., 2000. Lifting Bodies: interactive dance – finding new methodologies in the motifs prompted by new technology – a critique and progress report with particular reference to the Bodycoder System. Organised Sound 5(1): Cambridge University Press.