The University of Melbourne
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Semaphore

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posted on 2025-01-29, 05:37 authored by KATE NEALKATE NEAL, Laura Sheedy, Sal Cooper, Tim Walsh
A 60min visual-music-theatre piece with nine musicians, three dancers, animation, light and design.

Funding

Australia Council for the Arts;Music Board;

DFAT;ANZAC initiative;

Princeton University;PhD;

Australia Council;Dance Board;

Arts House;Performance and presentation;

History

Add to Elements

  • Yes

NTRO Output Type

  • Original Creative Work

NTRO Output Category

  • Original Creative Work : Other

Place

Arts House, Melbourne, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane

Venue

Arts House - North Melbourne Town Hall

NTRO Publisher

self

Start Date

2012-01-01

End Date

2015-11-20

Medium

Performance: music, dance, percussion, amimation, visual media, movement, choreography, animation

Research Statement

Semaphore is a 60min through-composed visual-music-theatre piece with nine musicians, three dancers, animation, light and design. Created over seven years (2008-2015), Semaphore represents a significant research period in extra-musical notation, symbology, coding, collaboration, and interdisciplinary practice. Semaphore premiered in 2015 at Arts House in Melbourne in a sell-out season of seven shows. Semaphore won Instrumental Work of the Year and Performance of the Year at the APRA Art music awards, showcased at APAM (Brisbane) and pitched at Classical:Next (Rotterdam). This work interviewed and documented surviving ANZAC signalman and found new ways to integrate and notate physical movement and gesture for both musicians and dancers. Semaphore is a deep exploration into encoded methods of communication and how these codification systems might stimulate interactivity and collaboration across different artistic practices. The audience enters a world where the spectacle of observing and perceiving encrypted information becomes the experience itself – often without the need to decipher or understand what is being communicated. Using physical, visual, and aural encoding systems such as semaphore, light code, binary code, Morse code, and pennants signalling – sound, light and physicality are fused in a common language. Semaphore is a deep exploration into encoded methods of communication and how these codification systems might stimulate interactivity and collaboration across different artistic practices. “Semaphore is very much a performance where music and dance meet, the fusion of these two forms at times worked so beautifully that the action on stage was mesmerizing, with audiences being drawn into this confusing reality”. Australian Arts Review, June 2nd, 2015 “Often humorous, the adventure stories and descriptions of learning to decipher code anchor Neal and Walsh's more abstract compositions to human experience.” Chloe Smethurst, The Age, May 28, 2015 “If the staccato telegraph and the blinking signal light can be considered their own forms of language, Neal has proven that they’re as capable of poetry as any other.” John Bailey, RealTime June-July 2015 pg. 43

Size or Duration of Work

60minutes

Affiliation

Kate Neal, University of Melbourne