HELMUT  OEHRING

Helmut Oehring is CODA – the child of deaf parents. His mother tongue, sign language for the deaf, with its spatial syntax and grammar, is like abstract physical poetry, the DNA of his audiovisual compositions. In these, he realises various transformations of visual languages into writing, sound and film, and a special form of SignMimo choreography based on transcription and notation systems for body languages.

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From 1960 onwards, American linguist William Clarence Stokoe proved through his research at Gallaudet University in Washington D.C. that sign languages are generally fully-fledged languages, and his discovery marked the beginning of modern sign language research. Stokoe developed a written notation system for sign language based on the Latin alphabet. In 1985, the scientifically oriented Hamburg Sign Language Notation System, or HamNoSys for short, continued the tradition of Stokoe-based systems. HamNoSys is a phonetic transcription system for signs that is currently widely used. As early as the 1970s, classical dancer Valerie Sutton developed the general movement description system Sutton Movement Writing for a wide variety of visual forms in which movement plays a central role – a five-line system similar to the musical notation we are familiar with, on which simultaneous and isolated hieroglyphs/signs are depicted at varying distances and heights. 

 

Building on this, Oehring develops a specially refined SignMimo choreography in his audiovisual compositions, based on video clips he has created to complement the score, which the performers – dancers, musicians, singers – rehearse and realise to the audiovisual sequences of the composition and its concertante, semi-staged or cinematic visualisation. singers – rehearse and perform to the audiovisual sequences of the composition and its concertante or semi-staged or cinematic visualisation.