»Noh •○ Virtual«- for Beatboxer and Digital Twin (2022)

Noh • Virtual is a live interactive media composition and performance project by Ricardo Climent, with Giorgos Gargalas (voice), Hongshuo Fan (Machine Learning assistance), Alena Mesarosova-Manu Ferrer (3D). The piece uses an Artificial Intelligentia trained after Greek beatboxer champion Giorgos Gargalas to explore aspects of materiality emerging from vocality including corporality, spatiality and tonality (Fischer-Lichte, 2008). It combines contemporary beatboxing culture and ancient Japanese Noh theatre in a Neural Network. The inspiration for this work came during Climent’s field work in Japan in 2019 following Zeami Motokiyo’s fingerprint (世阿弥 元清) (ca. 1363 –1443), a pioneer of Noh theatre playwriter and actor. After attending numerous Noh performances, he experienced how still
Noh masks, music and the ritual of slowness can become portals for audiences to enter the character’s life and emotions and transcend the perception of the Self in a totally different way than in Western culture.