Dr. Rainer Schulte, Director of the Center for Translation Studies, conceived the project as a multidisciplinary collaboration featuring new poetic visions for Arthur Rimbaud’s sonnet “Voyelles,” written in 1871.
The collaborative project gathered choreography, animation, music, and poetry to demonstrate the poem’s different poetic translations and visual interpretations. According to Dr. Schulte, “Rimbaud revolutionized the forms of poetic expressions. A strange title for a poem: Voyelles. The title does not suggest a topic or a subject. Words are made of vowels. Rimbaud goes to the beginning of language. The power resides in the vowels and letters that the poem is made Vowels are signs and sounds that build a word. Rimbaud wants to live with each individual vowel since the vowels open new vistas of how to enter the poem and live inside the walls of the poem.”
Dr. Christine Veras created the animations for the project in the Experimental Animation Lab. For her, this collaboration “extends my research into a sensorial collaboration using poetry, sound, dance, and animation. In exploring these bridges between technology, performance, and materiality, I continue my creative investigation as visual and sensory translations. This process of creative research through experimentation encourages and facilitates the recombination of old, new, and still emerging technologies. Such connections are only possible by knowing the past and understanding the applications and implications of animation’s more experimental and material processes. The results of such possibilities invite viewers to experience animation beyond traditional narrative formats.” See below a few behind-the-scenes images of the animation:
The project will be screened at the Open House event at the School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology on October 7, 2022. It features the choreography of Michelle Hanlon, sound effects by Kevin Hanlon, editing by Cathrin Yoder, animation by Christine Veras with assistance from Philip Martin, narration by Kathy Lingo, and coordination by Rainer Schulte.
The project will Premiere on October 20, 2022, at the ATC Gallery space at 5 pm.
Watch “New Poetic Horizons: Voyelles”here: