INTERVIEW: The sensory extravaganza of NONOTAK
We chat to NOEMI SCHIPFER OF NONOTAK STUDIO ahead of THE collective’s PERFORMANCE for the upcoming asia topa festival
the Paris-based artists EMBODIES A GRAND THEATRE OF AUDIOVISUAL SYNESTHESIA THAT IS BEST understood once you’ve submitted to the spectacle…
Happening right now, Asia TOPA is a 3-month long festival exploring the growing diaspora in Australia through Asian performing arts. One of the more intriguing events will be hosted by Arts Centre Melbourne and THE SUBSTATION, a night featuring a beautiful collision of artists cracking the codes of visuals and sounds: Ryoji Ikeda and NONOTAK STUDIO. The event quickly earned online recognition confirming the line-up is “without a doubt the best thing to come to Australia in a long time”. That makes it very hard to deny.
Doubling-down the big bill with industry spearhead Ryoji Ikeda is the Paris-based duo NONOTAK STUDIO. Birthed by Noemi Schipfer (visual artist) and Takami Nakamoto (artist, architect, musician), expect both creators to bring their own plate of multimedia expertise to the NONOTAK table with an SPF50+ coverage of visuals, lights, music, silhouettes and effects. Sometimes the most astounding things are indescribable, so it’s best if you watch their YouTube videos to grasp the intangible quality of their work.
As one of the industry’s most exciting breakout talents, Melbournians are set to be royally flushed by NONOTAK’s highly lauded piece Shiro, rated by The New York Times as one of the fifteen best sets from 2017’s Sónar Barcelona Music Festival. On top of that, Shiro was performed at the second edition of Loop, the Ableton-hosted summit for music makers held at the CTM Festival in Germany.
Ahead of what will be sonic and visual therapy, we had the pleasure of getting in touch with Noemi, the kinetic visual artist herself. At the stroke of a wintry midnight in Paris, we talked about a variety of subjects including their minimalistic approach to audio-visuals, to the ‘chicken or egg’ quality of experiencing an audio-visual show, less chin-stroking, and Melbourne’s very own wombat sanctuary….
You are known for your kinetic and visual skills and Nakamoto for his knack for space and sound. That binding of senses I think of as synaesthetic. how do you both work to create a synaesthetic experience together?
I have an illustration background, and, on top of music, Takami also has an architecture background. The idea was to combine it all together, kind of; connect the space and the light. In general, we were super interested in the medium of light.
With all these aspects of focus for your show, what’s your working process like? How do work and experimenting come into play?
Aside from performances, we also do installations. For the performance, the main idea involves integrating our silhouettes into the installation to become part of the visuals. By manipulating the direction of the projectors and the screens, our silhouettes appear, disappear and then reappear, combining with the sounds of our live shows. So it’s kind of cool to have our installations become live performances.
Compared to when we’re just displaying installations, our live performances have more direct contact with the audience, which is kind of nice. For the sounds [that accompany the shows], it’s more like a concert and a musical. The main idea is to play with what’s inside these structures, to create an illusion; to have it appear and reappear.
How do you make sure all the aspects you’ve mentioned (visuals, sounds, silhouettes) don’t dissociate from each other?
I think it comes down to our aesthetic. We really like minimalism, especially in the architecture of our designs. Because even if we use visuals, I think what we try to achieve with the visuals is to specialise them. It’s not just one screen, but the direction of the lights, and because it’s minimalistic, the lights just goes to the right and the left. With this kind of minimalism, it answers those traits because our work is not too much… like how do you say?... organic. It’s kind of contrasted. We need to have it synchronised with the sound. That way, the impact is more powerful for the audience because all the senses are combined, used and required, from the people, not just from the visuals and sounds.
Let’s say you were in the audience watching one of your shows. What do you experience/ focus on first? Would it be the sound or the visuals: Seeing sounds? Or drawing aural experiences? Or are they all a parallel journey, one existing simultaneously with the other?
I think… the sound is really powerful. Because the narration also comes from the music, the visuals kind of become an accompaniment to the sound.
On that note, would that be how NONOTAK execute an idea? With music carrying the piece forward?
Yeah, but because we’re a team we work super close and the visuals can give birth to the sounds. The same goes for sounds inspiring visuals. For the performance though, the sounds will come first because it’s more musical. But for installations, it really depends. For example, the light-effects can inspire us, and from there we work on how we want to personify the light. All the other aspects can be added afterwards. What is interesting is, because we work together, we kind of improvise. It’s not like we have a timeline we work from.
How do you mediate all your different skill sets as an artist in NONOTAK, a tattooist, and in general making 2D illustrations? That’s a very interesting hybrid!
(giggles) I think even with these different mediums, the aesthetic is always kind of the same. I think we [NONOTAK] have a core aesthetic. Then we try to explore it through different mediums like 2-dimensions, installations, video, exhibitions. We like to work in various domains, and that could be music, fashion, architecture… What we try to achieve with NONOTAK is to have one definite aesthetic and explore it through many different mediums and experiments. In our installations, we like to work with many different kinds of lights or use different materials.
Was the recent Sonar Istanbul event the first time you shared the bill with renowned and fellow ASiATOPA artist Ryoji Ikeda? how do you feel about sharing the stage with an artist who also experiments with visuals, lighting and sound within a mathematical framework; the same concept yet different to NONOTAK’s minimalistic approach to the use of space?
Oh yeah, we shared the bill on Sonar but we weren’t performing on the same day so we never got to meet Ryoji Ikeda. The upcoming Asia TOPA show will be the first time! Ryoji is on a much higher level, I really like him. He has a strong vision. We’re so happy and honoured to be able to perform on the same stage as him!
But it’s not the first time for NONOTAK in Melbourne. In the past, you have performed at Melbourne Music Week and Sugar Mountain, where Melbourne had the pleasure to experience ‘Late Speculation’, your previous project. Have you both acquainted yourself with Melbourne? And what are you looking forward to the most in presenting us with your new show Shiro?
We really love Melbourne. People are super friendly, open and nice. The reaction to our shows was really nice too. Shiro is also the evolution of Late Speculation (which we performed twice in Australia). For Late Speculation, we were inside a triangle. So, our shadows kind of react the same. With Shiro, the structure is a bit different in order to have us separate. I think it’s going to make more interesting effects. I hope people will come and see its evolution, as the size of the installation is bigger and the music has changed a lot too. The bass is really loud. We hope people will enjoy it.
On that note, what was the development/ inspiration that led to the creation of Shiro? What was the intellectualisation of this piece?
We don’t really intellectualise our art pieces. And when we say intellectualise, we don’t really have a text, kind of, to describe the piece. We like the direct content of the piece. We want the audience to feel the piece intuitively and not try to understand it. It’s not about creating meaning, it’s more about how you can play with the lights and create illusions.
So you are hoping the audience would just ‘sit back, relax, enjoy’?
Yeah, and if they can – dance of course! [laughs]
I can’t wait for that, any last thoughts like would you want to check off any lists when you come to Melbourne this time around? Travel, something like that?
Yeah, I would love to! Last time we visited a wombat sanctuary. We really love wombats, so cute! [laughs] People have asked us, “Why wombats? They’re big rats!” But I like them [laughs]
