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PERFORMANCE EXPERIMENTAL WORK

STOCOS

MADRID SPAIN

MORE INFO

the company

The Institut Stocos, founded and directed by Muriel Romero and Pablo Palacio, focuses on the analysis and development of the interaction between bodily gesture, sound and visual imagery. Research and work in this field integrate abstractions from other disciplines, such as artificial intelligence, biology, mathematics and experimental psychology, into a scenic context. The institute has produced a series of stage works that function as a form of artistic dissemination of its research, such as Acusmatrix, Catexis, Stocos, Double Bind, Neural Narratives1 : Phantom Limb, Neural Narratives2 : Polytopya, Piano & Dancer or The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which have been presented in numerous national and international competitions and theaters. In this series of pieces, the activity of bodies on stage evolves in three-dimensional sound spaces and interacts with sonic and visual entities that extend the bodily energy of dance to other sensory modalities.
The theoretical body generated during this process has been and still is the subject of publications and workshops at several universities and conservatories, including the UAH, the Conservatorio Superior María de Ávila, the Universidad Autónomoa, the Franz Liszt HochSchule, the Birmingham Conservatoire and Missouri State University. Instituto Stocos organizes and produces activities related to these fields, and its work has been supported by INAEM, Instituto Cervantes, AECID, Comunidad de Madrid and the European Union in cultural programs such as ICT-H2020, participating in European projects such as WholoDance, Metabody, D.A.N.C.E with international partners such as TMA Hellerau Dresden, TU Delft Hyperbody, Infomus Casa Paganini – University of Genoa, Coventry University or Universidad Politecnica de Milan. Since 2010, he has been collaborating on the development of Motion Composer, a technology designed to enable interaction between body and sound for people with disabilities.

the choreographer

Muriel Romero

She is a dancer and choreographer. His work focuses on the development of generative choreographic techniques, incorporating abstractions from other disciplines into his language. She has won several international awards, including the Moscow International Ballet Competition, the Fondation de Paris-Prix de Laussane Prize and the First National Dance Prize in Barcelona. She has been principal soloist with prestigious companies such as Deutsche Oper Berlin, Semper Oper Ballet Dresden, Bayerisches Staatsballet Munchen, Gran Théatre de Genève and Compañia Nacional de Danza. Throughout her career, she has worked with some of the greatest choreographers of our time, including W. Forsythe, J. Kylian, Nacho Duato, Ohad Naharin and Saburo Teshigawara. On the pedagogical front, she has taught at the Prague Conservatory, as part of the Master of Contemporary Stage Practice and Visual Culture at the UAH, and currently teaches at the Madrid Conservatory of Dance.

the composer

Pablo Palacio

Es compositor. Su trabajo se centra en las conexiones perceptivas entre imágenes sonoras que emergen en el curso de una composición. Ha sido artista en residencia en España, Suiza, Alemania o Líbano, y sus trabajos han sido interpretados en varios países desde Europa y Estados Unidos a China, India, Brasil, y editados por el sello Sub Rosa en Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music #6. Es un compositor muy activo en el ámbito de las artes escénicas y actualmente colabora con la Bauhaus-Universität Weimar diseñando instrumentos virtuales interactivos para personas con discapacidad. También participa mediante conferencias, seminarios y talleres en instituciones como la Franz Liszt Hochscule, Missouri State University (E.E.U.U), Birmingham Conservatoire, Conservatorio Superior María de Ávila o Máster de Practica Escénica Contemporánea y Cultura Visual de la UAH.

the shows

Play Video

CREDITS

Choreography by Elias García
and Larissa Lezhnina
Music: Léon Minkus
Duration: 120 minutes + intermission
32 dancers

Stocos is a transdisciplinary work that links dynamic stochastic sound synthesis and artificial life simulations to create aesthetic and behavioral codependencies between sound entities, body movements, virtual entities and visual imagery.
At the heart of Stocos is the notion of a synergistic environment whose physical and virtual characteristics are linked together by simulations of natural phenomena. This environment is inhabited by natural and artificial entities that perceive each other and whose behavior oscillates between different forms of autonomy and dependence. The choreographic structure of the piece emerges from the flow of these dynamic couplings.
Stocos focuses on the analysis and development of gestural relationships between sound entities, dancers and visually simulated entities. The dancers’ activities, the music and the images are linked together by the underlying algorithmic processes of Brownian motion and swarm behavior. In this way, a dense network of mutual influences emerges, establishing coherence between the spatial, perceptual and behavioral properties of the natural and artificial participants that make up the Stocos hybrid ecosystem.
Choreography is an art that excels at combining rigorous physical and mental training with the highest levels of creativity. At the same time, dance is the most ephemeral of all the arts. The creativity that emanates from the body disappears without a trace.
How can this creativity emanating from bodily experience be captured and used as a basis for artistic creation in other disciplines? Following this line of reasoning, Embodied Machine starts from an experiment based on translating the human body into abstractions that can serve as a basis for transforming it into other aesthetic manifestations. Is it possible to synthesize light and sound from our movements and interact with these presences as if they were dance partners? Is it possible to deepen our understanding of embodied creativity through artificial intelligence?
These are just some of the questions Embodied Machine seeks to answer. A piece in which Muriel Romero enters into a relationship on stage with her avatars, who manifest themselves in the form of light and sound, presences that behave autonomously and with which it is possible to interact in a multisensory dialogue.
Play Video

CREDITS

Choreography by Muriel Romero
Music: Pablo Palacio
Interactive visual simulation: Daniel Bisig
Lighting and laser : Pablo Palacio, Daniel Bisig and Maxi Gilbert
Make-up: Anna Cartes
Running time: 55 minutes without intermission
Dancer: Muriel Romero

press and testimonials

“One of the most striking applications of artificial intelligence in the arts is in the performing arts. An international pioneer in this field is the Spanish dance company Stocos, founded in 2007 by choreographer and dancer Muriel Romero and composer Pablo Palacio, which integrates artificial intelligence systems into the creative processes of its shows. Their work is highly acclaimed because they don’t just have machines imitate pre-existing creative models, but use them to truly invent new ones. “Our aim is to generate alternative worlds, new multisensory or multidimensional spaces, that our minds could never have imagined without this tool,” explains Pablo Palacio.”

Luis Almodóvar El PAIS

“The work of Stocos, a pioneer in Spain, is the perfect example of how art and science can be mutually fertile. The interaction between bodies and sounds produces magical moments that would be impossible to conceive without this connection: one dancer generating words with a simple gesture, another dancing with a beam of light, another composing a melody as he moves, Palacio explains in conversation with EL PAÍS on Wednesday at Matadero, during a break in the staging of his new show.”

Raquel Vidales

Jefa de sección de Cultura de EL PAÍS.

“Art created with computers, which is much more “interesting”. This vision is shared by Muriel Romero and Pablo Palacio, founders of Instituto Stocos, a dance company pioneering the experimentation of artificial intelligence in our country. Composer Palacio, choreographer Romero and programmer Daniel Bisig combine their skills to create performances whose process is reflected in academic articles.”

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