Projects

Luiz Vaz 73

Mixed-media with electronic music by Jorge Peixinho, 1975.
Slide projections by Ernesto de Sousa (black and white and colour, variable between presentations) and live instrumental improvisation. Aprox. 150'.
Inspired in Os Lusíadas by Luiz Vaz de Camões. 

Jorge Peixinho produced his music composition at the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music in Ghent, Belgium, between 1973 and 1974. Some of the slides in this piece were later integrated in Almada, Um Nome de Guerra. All presentations featured a musical improvisation by Grupo de Música Contemporânea de Lisboa.

The visual structure of this work is: a) open, tending to constitute an involvement, or artofspace; b) coincidental, alternately with the poem by Camões or with Jorge Peixinhos’ music; but c) autonomous, due to the independent semantic formation of its own families of forms and meaning. (...) Visual autonomy (the "mute poetry" according to Camões) is motivated by a certain abstract arbitrarity which also becomes intimate by means of the indiscriminating use of series of external images, such as O teu Corpo é o meu Corpo (your body is my body) (photographs and poster dated 1972), Os Monstros (The Monsters) (experimental film in preparation), etc.

Ernesto de Sousa, "Visual Structure", Luiz Vaz catalogue, 1976.


The composition as a whole arose from the final assembly of a selection of differentiated fragments (original fragments and manipulations), according to a subjective identification of the musical fragments with the more relevant episodes of the poem. This operation was carried out by means of principles of psychological and symbolic "correspondence" between the basic sound structures and the more specific elements of the poem (historical, legendary or mythological). To this primary "correspondence" I added combinatory rules based on the behaviour of each structure towards the others and to external circumstances.

Jorge Peixinho, "The Music of Luiz Vaz 73", Luiz Vaz catalogue, 1976.


 

Presented at:
5th International Mixed-Media Festival in Ghent, Zwaarte Zaal, January 1975.
24 heures communication, Palais des Beaux Arts de Bruxelles, April 1975.
Galeria Nacional de Arte Moderna, Lisbon, February 1976. Space designed by Fernando Calhau.
Semana de Arte na Rua, Mosteiro de Santa Clara-a-Velha, Coimbra, June 1976.
Encontro Nacional do Cinema Não-Profissional, Teatro Garcia de Resende, Évora, June 1977.
2as Jornadas Internacionais de Música Electroacústica, Academia de Música de Viana do Castelo, November 1981.