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1972-07-07 ""CNPA explores new artistic expression""

10C - The Daily Iowan University Edition - 
Friday, July 7, 1972

From bodyworks to laser beams

CNPA explores new arti

   Last May The Yellow Sound opened for the first time at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and attracted attention because the critics couldn't really call it theatre and couldn't really call it visual art. It was both.
   Written over 60 years ago by the Expressionist painter Vasily Kandinsky, The Yellow Sound combined the movement and words of actors, electric sounds, and the color and images from film to achieve the synaesthesia (mixing of the senses) which its name implies.
   Events like The Yellow Sound have been happening in Iowa City for years...ever since The Center for New Performing Arts (CNPA) got its pilot grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1969.
   They've been happening because CNPA stands on the frontier of experimental work in the arts.
   One example: this November

[Photo of man and woman dancing. text underneath: One number in the CNPA dance ensemble's performance last May was a visualization of folk idiom music. (John Zielinski photo)]

the CNPA will "unveil" a new medium of artistic expression which program director Bill Hubbard promises is the only one of its type in the country. A laser.
   A special laser that "reads" music and translates it into abstract visual images.
   This has been built by Lowell Cross, a performer associate with the CNPA who designed the laser for the Pepsi-Cola pavilion at the World's Fair in Japan.
    INTERPLAY
   The CNPA exists to explore new media (like the laser) and new theories (theories of perception, for example) as they relate to performance.
   It has emphasized intermedia work ever since that first production which led to the formation of the Center - a piece called Interplay done in 1969 by Hans Breder (art), Ted Parry (film), Bob Gilbert (theatre), and Bill Hibbard (music).
   The emphasis may be changing now.
   "We are feeling less obligated to pursue multimedia and intermedia as ends in themselves," Hibbard said. "We realize that these things will happen anyway."
   "Now there's a new awareness that the layering of media does not make it intermedia. Just turning on a light and a tape recorder and having a dancer in motion won't do it."
   What will do it, said Hibbard, is applying the concepts "rather than just the physical trappings" of one media to another. He referred to a dance-theater piece called Osiris which was done last year. "I responded to the blocking in a musical way rather than a theatrical way."
          MIDWAY
   Here's what an evening with the CNPA may be like.
   It's last year's October, and there's a Midway (bodyworks...video-sculpture...environmental music...synaesthetic activities...(in the art museum.
   White strobe light pulses out the front door, and white uniforms push black bicycles, black tricycles, wheelchairs, and buggies around the sculpture court as four performers in the northeast gallery co-ordinate a swinging pendulum with lights and sounds between speakers and people stare and meanwhile two performers wrapped in cellophane face an elegant table in the Print Room as a television behind them blinks a film message (meat on conveyor belt) while people stare and sometimes people like to take pictures of these things and meanwhile "Saturday Night at the Movies" plays downstairs, a videotape interrupted by a color quantizer, a device that makes gray bloom toward each color, each color assigned according to gray level.
   And meanwhile a man is standing on the wall. People stare.
   He stands on a projection booth for one hour.
   "...attempts to make a concrete metaphor out of the relationship between film and sculpture." (That's how the artist, Chris Parker, describes it.)
      OLD PLAYS NEW WAYS
   "Yes, in a sense we were looking for a new genre," Hib

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10C - The Daily Iowan University Edition - Friday, July 7, 1972 From bodyworks to laser beams CNPA explores new arti Last May The Yellow Sound opened for the first time at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and attracted attention because the critics couldn't really call it theatre and couldn't really call it visual art. It was both. Written over 60 years ago by the Expressionist painter Vasily Kandinsky, The Yellow Sound combined the movement and words of actors, electric sounds, and the color and images from film to achieve the synaesthesia (mixing of the senses) which its name implies. Events like The Yellow Sound have been happening in Iowa City for years...ever since The Center for New Performing Arts (CNPA) got its pilot grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1969. They've been happening because CNPA stands on the frontier of experimental work in the arts. One example: this November [Photo of man and woman dancing. text underneath: One number in the CNPA dance ensemble's performance last May was a visualization of folk idiom music. (John Zielinski photo)] the CNPA will "unveil" a new medium of artistic expression which program director Bill Hubbard promises is the only one of its type in the country. A laser. A special laser that "reads" music and translates it into abstract visual images. This has been built by Lowell Cross, a performer associate with the CNPA who designed the laser for the Pepsi-Cola pavilion at the World's Fair in Japan. INTERPLAY The CNPA exists to explore new media (like the laser) and new theories (theories of perception, for example) as they relate to performance. It has emphasized intermedia work ever since that first production which led to the formation of the Center - a piece called Interplay done in 1969 by Hans Breder (art), Ted Parry (film), Bob Gilbert (theatre), and Bill Hibbard (music). The emphasis may be changing now. "We are feeling less obligated to pursue multimedia and intermedia as ends in themselves," Hibbard said. "We realize that these things will happen anyway." "Now there's a new awareness that the layering of media does not make it intermedia. Just turning on a light and a tape recorder and having a dancer in motion won't do it." What will do it, said Hibbard, is applying the concepts "rather than just the physical trappings" of one media to another. He referred to a dance-theater piece called Osiris which was done last year. "I responded to the blocking in a musical way rather than a theatrical way." MIDWAY Here's what an evening with the CNPA may be like. It's last year's October, and there's a Midway (bodyworks...video-sculpture...environmental music...synaesthetic activities...(in the art museum. White strobe light pulses out the front door, and white uniforms push black bicycles, black tricycles, wheelchairs, and buggies around the sculpture court as four performers in the northeast gallery co-ordinate a swinging pendulum with lights and sounds between speakers and people stare and meanwhile two performers wrapped in cellophane face an elegant table in the Print Room as a television behind them blinks a film message (meat on conveyor belt) while people stare and sometimes people like to take pictures of these things and meanwhile "Saturday Night at the Movies" plays downstairs, a videotape interrupted by a color quantizer, a device that makes gray bloom toward each color, each color assigned according to gray level. And meanwhile a man is standing on the wall. People stare. He stands on a projection booth for one hour. "...attempts to make a concrete metaphor out of the relationship between film and sculpture." (That's how the artist, Chris Parker, describes it.) OLD PLAYS NEW WAYS "Yes, in a sense we were looking for a new genre," Hib