networked_performance

June 29, 2007

Double Skin/Double Mind

Experience a workshop, virtually

The interactive installation version of Double Skin/Double Mind will preview at Beeldmedia Studio, Amsterdam School of the Arts, Jodenbreestraat 3 on June 29 + 30 from 16:00-20:00.

Double Skin / Double Mind is a virtual version of the Double Skin / Double Mind workshop. This workshop, which has been taught by dance company Emio Greco | PC since 1996, represents the basis of the creative work of choreographers Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten. Participants in this workshop are challenged to discover new interpretations of their dancing body.

Throughout 2006 an interdisciplinary research group, consisting of dance notators Eliane Mirzabekiantz and Marion Bastien, motion capture researcher Fridiric Bevilacqua, cognitive neuroscientist Corinne Jola, media artist Chris Ziegler, cinematography Maite Bermudez, artistic research processes Scott de Lahunta and EG | PC researcher Bertha Bermudez, has been focusing on this specific workshop trying to analyse and document it.

The different data from each research area have been collected, and interactive graphic visualisation tools and motion capture were re-implemented to create this preview of the Interactive Installation Double Skin / Double Mind. The current installation offers participants the possibility of taking part in a virtual version of the workshop in real time, while receiving verbal, physical and peripheral information. By following a life size moving figure, the participants will recognize, compare and understand their actions and involvement in the practice of this workshop. They will travel through the Double Skin / Double Mind structure in a mental and physical way, experiencing what the different layers are.

Concept and realization: Chris Ziegler (ZKM Karlsruhe), Fridiric Bevilacqua (IRCAM, Paris), Bertha Bermudez (Emio Greco | PC)
Co-production with: Amsterdams School of the Arts, research group Art Practice and development, Marijke Hoogenboom
With thanks to: Maite Bermudez, Katharina Pohlmann, Eliane Mirzabekiantz, Marion Bastien, Corinne Jola, Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst / Montevideo, Scott deLahunta, Jeroen Fabius, Paul van der Ploeg, Cinedans and the EG | PC team
Project supported by: Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds
Emio Greco | PC receives funding from: the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and from the Dutch Fund for Amateur Art and Performing Arts.

contact: berthabermudez]at]egpc.nl

Chris Ziegler
mobile +49172 89 56 328
http://www.movingimages.de

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June 22, 2007

Merce Cunningham - Biped

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June 20, 2007

Locus Tangent Return

Invitation to Re-Construct, Re-Mix, Re-Choreograph

From Hyperchoreography: The video clips for Locus Tangent Return were shot on 2 DV-5 D'zign HDD camcorders. The dancers improvised movements based on a series of instructions. The focus of these movements was repetition of simple gestures and building complex sequences. Sometimes these would accumulate in length or sometimes they would multiply by superimposing, and sometimes they would take a movement from the other dancer and drop one of their own. On top of this they had to work with the concept of the title: Postion - Locus :: Change - Tangent :: Repetition - Return. Short video clips have been extracted from the recordings and made available for re-construction, re -mixing and re-choreographing to create new works.

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June 01, 2007

UNIQLO MIXPLAY

Go here to mix your own dance and sound.

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May 29, 2007

Reconfigurable Costume

A Platform for Interactive Performance

Leah Buechley's reconfigurable costume consists of a torso piece and an assortment of sensing appendages that can be snapped to the torso. Sensors in the appendages include muscle flex sensors, accelerometers, bend sensors and touch sensors. Sensor data is relayed to a computer, via a bluetooth module embedded in the torso, where it can be used to control or generate music, video and other multimedia content.

The costume, built using her version 2.0 e-textile construction kit, is form-fitting and stretchy. The electronic modules are kept as small as possible so they do not interfere with the dancer. The costume was used in an improvisational performance in May, 2007 to control a player piano. This performance was a collaboration with Michael Theodore, a professor in the music department, and Nicole Predki, a graduate student in the dance department. Click here for a movie (150MB).

Posted by jo at 06:37 PM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2007

Technologically Expanded Dance

Call for Participation

Technologically Expanded Dance: Call for formal presentations, art installations and pocket performances :: November 22 - 24, 2007 :: CULTURGEST, Lisbon Portugal.

The Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, TU Lisbon, is pleased to announce the Conference Technologically Expanded Dance. The following conference topics will be considered: 1. Cross modal perception, artificial synesthesia and intermedial relations between artistic languages 2. Motion capture systems and archives of body movements 3. Aesthetic signification of technology 4. Transfers from game structures onto audible, visual or kinetic narratives 5. Corporeality and new technologies 6. Virtual and augmented reality applied to the stage.

CULTURGEST has a small auditorium, 4 rooms and 1 foyer that could host pannels on the above themes, media art installations, new media artworks and pocket performances. Submitters are invited to check the rider of the hostage spaces within the perspective of site-specific*. Eventually submitters should provide their own equipment. Proposals should be submitted online by 29 June 2007. Following an evaluation by the reviewers, authors will be notified by the end of July 2007.

Posted by jo at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2007

Men in the Wall

Men in the Wall by Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie :: Opening Reception: Wednesday, June 20, 7 – 10 pm :: Artist Talk 7:30 p.m :: Installation runs June 20 – 30 :: 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404 :: FREE admission :: 310-453-3711.

Men in the Wall is a four-screen, 3-dimensional stereoscopic video dance installation. Special stereoscopic glasses will be provided to watch this 3D world of four men, who share their framed lives in a public quartet while retaining their private differences. The piece runs on a continuous 25-minute loop and will be projected from four different projectors onto the wall.

Billy Cowie and Liz Aggiss principally work together in the area of dance/theatre performance, screen dance and installation. They have made over thirty live performance pieces for their company Divas Dance Theatre, have toured Europe extensively and completed four major screen projects (two BBC Dance for Camera commissions and two ACE Capture projects).

They have created commissioned work for 'Extemporary Dance Theatre',' Mantis', 'Transitions', 'Intoto', 'Carousel' and 'Hi Spin'. Aggis and Cowie’s dance screen work has received numerous international awards including: Czech Crystal, Prague Golden Film Festival (2002); Special Jury Golden Award, Houston (2003); Best Female Film, Mediawaves Hungary (2003); and the Romanian National Office of Cinematography Award (2003). A book about their work entitled Anarchic Dance was published by Routledge in January 2006.

Billy Cowie has composed music performed by Marie McLaughlin, Nicola Hall, Gerard McChrystal, Daphne Scott-Sawyer, Juliet Russell, Rowan Godel, Pammjit Pammi and Naomi Itami. He has also composed music for three BBC Radio projects: 'The Tempest', Philip Pullman's 'Dark Materials Trilogy' (both dir by David Hunter) and Thinking Earth (dir Pam Marshall). He has also composed music for film directors Tony Palmer, Chris Rodley, Stephen Frears and Bob Bently. Billy Cowie is currently Principle Research Fellow at the University of Brighton.

Liz Aggiss is a performer/choreographer/film-maker and has received numerous awards including the Bonnie Bird Choreography Award (1994) and the Arts Council Dance Fellowship Award (2003). She has written for Dance Theatre Journal and animated and is currently Professor of Visual Performance at the University of Brighton.

Posted by jo at 06:53 PM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2007

Merce Cunningham Dance Company

Site-Specific, Participatory Experiences

Join us for a Moment with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company on Saturday, May 19th: The Orange County Performing Arts Center celebrates the unique character of its new multi-venue Performing Arts Center Campus by presenting the remarkable Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The evening-length experience will feature company performances and multi-media happenings in multiple locations at the Performing Arts Center that will showcase the profound impact of this major American Artist.

7:00 PM – Samueli Theater: Bonnie Brooks, Dance Department Chair, Columbia College Chicago: “How to Watch a Cunningham Concert: Eight Entry Points and Three Exit Strategies”. Join dance scholar Bonnie Brooks as she presents the core concepts of the Cunningham Aesthetic in an informal lecture/demonstration that will demystify the Cunningham aesthetic for the newest audience members and deepen the experience for those who have seen the company in the past.

8:00 PM – Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall:

Merce Cunningham Dance Company performs an Event in the new Concert Hall. To celebrate this new space, the company creates a 30-minute, site specific performance. Musicians John King and William Winant will provide the sound component.

8:30 PM – Plaza Courtyard- ‘Beach Birds for Camera’: Adjacent to the new Richard Serra sculpture, view one of Merce Cunningham’s most important film dances, Beach Birds for Camera (1993, directed by Eliot Caplan), projected onto the wall of the Segerstom Hall at a majestic scale never seen before. The score will be performed live by John King, Stephan Moore, William Winant and Michael Dauphinais. While watching, visit one of the iPod stations to pick up your iPod Shuffle before you enter the next venue, Segerstrom Hall.

9:00 PM – Segerstrom Hall

The Merce Cunningham Dance Company performs Merce’s latest work, eyeSpace in the West Coast Premiere. Mikel Rouse has created an innovative score that incorporates the use of iPod Shuffles, digitally sampled sounds of John Cage’s prepared piano, and an environmental soundscape that will be performed live by MCDC musicians and projected throughout the theater. Decor and costumes are by Brooklyn-based painter Henry Samelson.

9:30 PM – Plaza Courtyard— ‘Playground-MinEvent’

It’s a “Happening!’ Return your iPod to the iPod Stations in the Plaza Courtyard and immerse yourself in ‘Playground – MinEvent; a one-of-a-kind Multi-Media Experience especially created just for tonight and just for you. This MinEvent will transform the Plaza Courtyard with dynamic projections, LIVE Cameras, music DJs, moving lights, and a cast of student dancers.

“Playground-MinEvent’’ is being created as a youthful Orange County 'response' to the ground-breaking work of Merce Cunningham and avant-garde composer, John Cage. Performers include UCI Dance students under the direction of Cunningham alumnus Michael Cole, plus student musicians/DJs, video artists and camera operators from Chapman University and Cal State Fullerton – all to create an Interactive LIVE Video/Soundscape full of surprises.

Posted by jo at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2007

mech[a]OUTPUT

koosil-ja / danceKUMIKO

The Japan Society presents mech[a]OUTPUT by koosil-ja / danceKUMIKO :: Thu-Sat May 31- June 2, 2007.

Radical New York-based choreographer/dancer/ singer song writer/ new media artist Koosil-Ja presents an electrifying multimedia dance-performance with live 3-D environment, seamlessly incorporating elements of traditional noh music and choreography from the classic noh play Dojoji. The legends surrounding Dojo-ji Temple in Wakayama, southeast of Osaka, have inspired numerous noh and kabuki plays about the vengeful spirit of a spurned woman. By juxtaposing the restrained and subtle choreography of Dojoji with 3D world imaging projected on to a large screen, the daring Bessie Award and Guggenheim Fellowship-winning artist Koosil-ja transposes the work into her own aesthetic context, creating an innovative blend of modern and traditional, digital and flesh.

The production features 3D world designed and production by Claudia Hart, 3D Interactive interface designed and performed by John Klima, live Neo Punk Music by Geoff Matters, dramaturgy by Nanako Nakajima, Pendulum & Physical Apparatus Design and Kinetic Engineering by Michael Casselli, Head Gear by Tara Webb, and Betnon-C Bainbirdge (Video Projection Super Engineering).

With:

Geoff Matters (Live Neo Punk Music and Software Design)
Nanako Nakajima (Dramaturgy)
Michael Casselli (Pendulum & Physical Apparatus Design and Kinetic Engineering)
Claudia Hart (3D Wrold)
John Klima (3D Interface & Live Performance)
koosil-ja (Concept, Dance, Video, Video pendulum, Song, Sound Installation and Costume)
Tara Webb (Head Gear)
Benton-C Bainbirdge (Video Projection Super Engineering)

Dates: Thu-Sat May 31- June 2, 2007
Time: 7:30PM
Location: 333 East 47th Street, btwn 1st and 2nd Ave. NYC
Tickets: $25/$20 Japan Society members.
Reservations: Japan Society (212) 715-1258
at JAPAN SOCIETY Ticket Information

STUDENT RUSH $12.50 Student Rush (50% off!)
Pending availability, Student Rush tickets will go on sale an hour
before showtime. Valid ID required, 2 tickets max per ID.

mech[a]OUTPUT is made possible by a commission from Japan Society; funds from American Music Center Live Music for Dance, and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; and generous individual contributions.

Posted by jo at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)

Synk

Real-time Processing

Synk is an experimental dance / video / audio piece where video and audio samples and recycles the movements of the dancer on stage, creating rich layers of images and sound. The performance deals with transformation of time ; distortion, displacement, delay, layering and buffering. The idea of Synk is that no prerecorded video or audio will be used, only material sampled during the performance are presented, to investigate live as raw material, and to impose a structure on a live situation to allow unpredictable results within that frame structure. Synk was made in 2002 and performed in a split-evening with the video ensemble 242.Pilots.

On Friday May 4th, (HC Gilje) performed Synk with Kreutzerkompani and Justin Bennett. More images from Synk (click on the small images).

Posted by jo at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2007

Opensource: {Videodance} Symposium

Call for Proposals

The second international Opensource: {Videodance} Symposium :: Universal Hall Arts Centre, Findhorn Foundation Community, Morayshire, Scotland :: 21st - 25th November 2007.

Screen dance is a rapidly expanding area of artistic, academic and curatorial activity worldwide. Inherent in screen dance practice is the interface and collaboration between dance artists and media arts practitioners. Opensource: {Videodance} 2007 is an open symposium for video dance-makers and dance artists, academics, curators and producers coming together, to share ideas and work, network and debate, and provide a valuable platform for current issues in the area of screen dance practice to come to the surface.

Building on the strengths of the 2006 event, this symposium expressly aims to place current screen dance practice in a wider theoretical and critical context and to bring people from the collaborating disciplines together in a way that rarely happens, in order to impact significantly and positively on the lives and work of the participating individuals. The vision is to create an exciting and supportive place for people to engage, talk, hang out, relax, think, and listen, and to enable the spontaneous and dynamic unfolding of events. The programme for the four days will be a mixture of pre-arranged presentations and open forums initiated by the participants.

Whilst the greater part of the timetable will be dedicated to allowing the participants to initiate and following though discussion, we will again approach a select few artists/academics to give special presentations/lectures designed to inspire and provoke thought beyond the direct concerns of the participants. In addition, this year we are inviting proposals for limited number of presentations.

Call for proposals:

Seminar and Paper proposals are invited for presentation from authors (Academics and practitioners) of investigations into the interfaces of screen dance to one of the following formats: Academic research paper, Reports on practice-based work, Essay, Curated screening of work.

We encourage contributions that are related to all aspects of screen dance practice including interdisciplinary approaches in performance,

architecture, music, literature, visual arts, and new media but particular preference will be given to those exploring the outcomes of the first Opensource {Videodance} symposium in 2006, notably the "draft (hu)manifesto" available to read here.

All proposals will be peer-reviewed and selected based on their quality, originality, and potential for further discourse and appropriateness for the symposium. Paper Proposals/Abstracts should be submitted no later than June 30, 2007. Notification of acceptance will be sent by July 30, 2007. Those selected will be invited to submit their presentation for publication in the first issue of The Screendance Journal. email: abstracts[at]screendance.org

Due to the open nature of this symposium presentation slots are limited therefore we are interested in inviting speakers who will be able to engage fully with the wider aims of the event.

Produced by Bodysurf Scotland and Videodance.org.uk . Funded and supported by Scottish Arts Council and The School of Media Arts and Imaging, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK

Contact bodysurf[at]findhorn.com for booking details and to register interest and keep checking http://videodance.blogspot.com for bulletins.

Posted by jo at 07:09 PM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2007

Of Skins and Screens: Hyperdance, Haptic Cinema, and Contact Improvisation

Somnambules

"...The browser window opens onto a nightmarish vision of death, disembodiment, and decay engulfed in the darkness of a black screen. Dancing specters and haunted souls—casualties of digital media—appear throughout Somnambules, a hyperdance piece. A small but growing genre of dance and new media, hyperdance [1] shifts the material conditions of dance creation and spectatorship by considering the computer screen a site for dance performance. Combining visual art, music, and dance by collaborating artists Nicolas Clauss, Jean-Jacques Birgé, and Didier Silhol, respectively, Somnambules emphasizes the computer user’s body in navigation and exploration. The user’s motion, confined as it is to the small geographies of mouse or trackpad, and the user’s physical contact with the image, similarly confined, stand out in this piece as compared with other hyperdances. [2] Users affect onscreen motion through their own movements, which operate simultaneously with qualities of touch (click, drag, mouse, etc.): motion and touch work in tandem at the mutually-defining sites of the user’s body and the image. Drawing attention to the piece’s cinematic and choreographic components, I explore movement and touch as both objects of interaction and means of interaction in Somnambules. I further tease out specific modes of bodily interaction, working toward a more nuanced understanding of bodily engagement in the broader fields of interactive and responsive media..." From Of Skins and Screens: Hyperdance, Haptic Cinema, and Contact Improvisation by Harmony Bench, Extensions Journal.

Posted by jo at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2007

The Reception

Performance + Discussion

A tele-immersive cross-disciplinary performance piece called The Reception will be presented April 20, 21, 27, 28 at 8pm and April 22, 29 at 2pm as a part of the Berkeley Dance Project 2007. The piece was created by the co-directors of SmithWymore Disappearing Acts, Lisa Wymore and Sheldon B. Smith in collaboration with Ruzena Bajcsy of CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society). Live performance and streamed realtime 3d tele-immersive technology are used to poetically examine the subject of presence. BDP is an annual collection of danceworks presented by UCBerkeley's Department of Theater Dance and Performance Studies. Performances will take place at UCB's Zellerbach Playhouse theater.

The April 22 performance will be followed by a post-performance discussion: Being Here: Presence/Remote Presence within Live and Media Based Performance by N. Katherine Hayles. The discussion will feature a demonstration of a live bi-located dance utilizing the tele-immersion labs at UC Berkeley and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, the Towsend Center Dance Studies Working Group, and the Dance Department and Intermedia Program at Mills College. The discussion is free and open to the public.

Posted by jo at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)

The Reception

Performance + Discussion

Posted by jo at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2007

February 28, 2007

turned

Resampled Dancer

Dance MADE IN BAVARIA 1. - 3. March 2007 Munich :: Chris Ziegler: turned + Herzliche Einladung nach Munchen in die Muffathalle, 2nd March 2007 8:30 PM :: director/ video: Christian Ziegler (D) / dance: Kazue Ikeda (J) / music: FLorian Meyer (D).

turned is an interactive and multi-media dance performance, developed and performed by media artist Chris Ziegler from Munich, with Kazue Ikeda, a Japanese dancer currently working in Berlin and DJ Florian Meyer (Institut fuer feinmotorik). The performance combines elements from dance, painting, visual art and music. The recorded images of the dancing body are sampled and distorted by electronic processing. The motion deconstructed in this manner opens up a poetic vision of loss and destruction. The viewer is taken along on a quest for clues. The piece turned is a turntable: it begins as a concert, continues as dance and then turns into an interactive video sequence and finally into a VR-installation - a multi-media-based spatial structure evolving before the eyes of the viewer.

The production realized during a residency at ZKM | Karlsruhe (center for art and media) was supported by: Kulturreferat der LH M|nchen, Bayerischer Landesverband Zeitgenvssischer Tanz, Fonds Darstellende K|nste e.V., Bonn.

Posted by jo at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2007

Temporal Interference

An Exploration of Space and Memory

Temporal Interference: Jane Franklin Dance explores the space memory occupies in a collaboration with digital artist Bryan Leister and composer Gina Biver. This time based performance installation can be seen at Warehouse Theater during two weekends, February 24 - 25 and March 3 - 4. The concept is to explore aspects of space and memory, and how it can effect those around us. Using live video, electroacoustic software and a Theremin, dancers will carve out an environment of sound and color. Biver's compositions will be reinterpreted as the dancers move through space, creating a unique experience of media and modern dance. The media installation will be available for audience interaction between performances.

There will be three performances each day, and will feature several dancers, live video, sound and interactive sculptural elements. For advance tickets and more information visit: http://bryanleister.com/ti/ Read a review >>, and another.

Posted by jo at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)

February 08, 2007

My First Second Life Dance Performance

On Sunday night, while watching the Super Bowl, I attended the premiere performance of Second Life Ballet's "Olmannen" in the Second Life virtual world. I wrote about this upcoming performance last week.

Well, I had to give myself a crash course in Second Life to attend this performance because I've never experimented with this virtual environment. But just about everything went wrong on the computer and software side for me, which I'll explain more about below.

But first, here is background about the Second Life Ballet performance so you can have an idea of what an avatar dance performance is like:

- The program guide for the performance of "Olmannen: An Original Ballet."

- A news piece from OspreyTherian, uploaded to YouTube, recaps the Sunday night performance. You can see the dancers in the background for a few seconds, which gives you a glimpse of what dancing is like in this virtual world: More >> [blogged by Doug Fox on Great Dance]

Posted by jo at 07:29 PM | Comments (0)

February 07, 2007

V2_Lab presents

Test_Lab--Dancing-around-technology

Test_Lab: Dancing around technology (presentation) :: February 22, 2007 20:00-23:00 :: admission: free :: reservation: press[at]v2.nl.

Over the last decades, most artistic disciplines have been introduced to technological developments. In many artistic fields, the technologies introduced have been fully integrated in the artists' daily practices resulting in an integration that often makes it hard to imagine the field ever existed without them. However, in the field of performing arts (physical artistic expression such as dance and theatre) this integration did not evolve as naturally. Although many attempts have been made at adopting new technologies in these fields, the marriage between the two was often forced, resulting in what was rather a combination of technology and performing arts than integration of the two.

One of the main aRt&D themes of the V2_Lab is the development of sensor and actuator technology for the fields of performing arts and human-machine interaction. This Test_Lab aims to bridge the different needs of and approaches to technology between performing artists and soft-, hardware designers. This will be realized in this edition of Test_Lab through the testing of two projects that are currently under development in the V2_Lab; Soft(n) and Body In Bits And Pieces. A theoretical presentation by Armando Menicacci will further elaborate on the theme. Both the two projects and the presentation are described below. Soft(n) is the working title for an interactive public art-experience developed in a collaboration between Thecla Schiphorst (Director of the Whisper[s] research group, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) and V2_Lab, within the framework of the Passepartout consortium.

This project is based on exploring emerging network behavior through interaction between a group of soft networked objects. It takes place in a social urban setting; a café or lounge. The work incorporates the design of a group of interactive soft objects, each containing a specially designed and custom-engineered multi-touch soft input surface, motion detectors, an ability to output movement (vibration), light, sound and physical deformation, and communicate wirelessly to each other. The project includes the development and testing of an interaction model based on input heuristics of touch and movement. An earlier version of the project recently won the Gold Exhibition Award at the ITEA 2 symposium.

Body In Bits And Pieces (BIBAP) is an interactive Internet project initiated by Carolien Hermans (Director of DansLab, Amsterdam) and is funded by the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NPS) and the Stimuleringsfonds voor Nederlandse Omroep Producties. A prototype of the project was developed in collaboration between Danslab (Carolien Hermans and Benjamin Scheers) and V2_Lab. The aim of the project is to integrate a dance movie in an interactive Internet application and to create an interface that requires physical interaction to enhance the immersion of the user. The project combines physical expression in two ways; by cleverly integrating dance movie clips in the application and by enabling control over the application by body movement of the user. Armando Menicacci is the director of MediaDanse (University Paris-VIII / ANOMOS, Paris). Menicacci will present how the body movement analysis theory and practice developed in University Paris-VIII lead to new relationships between dance and digital technology in some contemporary artworks and fundamental researches created and conducted by his research group. By doing so, he will show how MediaDanse forms a structure of exchange between the fields of academic and technological research, networks of artistic creation, cultural action, and the general public.

Test_Lab is a bi-monthly public event hosted by V2_ (Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam)

Related links:
ANOMOS: www.anomos.org
Whisper[s] research group: whisper.surrey.sfu.ca
Dampf_Lab: dampf.v2.nl
V2_Lab: lab.v2.nl

Posted by jo at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2007

Quartet

Virtual Dancer

Quartet :: 15 Feb 2007 - 18 Feb 2007 :: The Great Hall at Barts :: Informed by new scientific research in the field of physiology, this ICA co-production is the culmination of several years' collaborative research. It is an investigation into the kineasthetics of music: determining movements which produce sounds, which in turn produce new choreographies.

Movement is played across the senses of the human body. On stage at the Great Hall at St Bart's hospital live music and dance come together in the form of a virtual dancer that is driven by the mechanics of physical expression. This multi-media interplay is the culmination of several years collaborative research from specialists from engineering, biomedical and computational science, 3D animation and motion control in the field of physiology. Three leading choreographers - Lea Anderson, Russell Maliphant and Lisa Nelson - will each shape sections of the performance.

Quartet has 4 components: a virtual dancer; a musician; a robot camera; and, a real dancer. Quartet's central figure, the virtual dancer, is an avatar of sensual information, playing between its manifestation and its puppeteers. On stage the interactions between the human and computerised performers slip through different pairings, trios, and quartets, such as the musician using the speed or acceleration of her violin playing to duet with the real dancer; or a trio between the real and virtual dancers and the robot camera, exploring the choreography of cinematic space: the poetics of looking and moving. This interplay uncovers the tensions within the transfer of data.

The performance experiments with our perception and its articulation. It demonstrates communication within and between bodies in real-time by creating relationships between music, the gesture of musical performance, dance, robotics and animation.

Quartet has been funded by Sciart Production Awards 2005-6 for the Wellcome Trust in collaboration with the Physiological Laboratory at Cambridge University and the Arts Council of England. It is co-produced by the Live and Media Arts Department at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, with support from the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Victoria, and ZKM Center for Art and Technology, Germany.

£15 / £10 Concessions / £9 ICA Members.

To book tickets please call the ICA box office on 020 7930 3647, open between 12noon and 9.00pm daily. Alternatively go to the ICA web site http://www.ica.org.uk/Quartet+12978.twl

Quartet Talk :: 17 February 2007 :: ICA Cinema

The creators of Quartet, specialists in dance, music, computational science, 3D animation and motion control, will discuss the creation of the software and hardware for its new interactive systems.

The discussion will be chaired by Margie Medlin, Project Director and Dr Susanna Ackers from the Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, Germany.

Stevie Wishart Musical Director and Composer & Todor Todoroff, Sound and Gesture Systems Engineer will speak about creating real-time musical instruments to map the sounds and gestures of the musician to a virtual dancer.

Lea Anderson, Choreographer, Gerald Thompson, Motion Control Camera Designer & Carlee Mellow, Dancer will speak about working with motion control technologies to create choreographies of cinematic space and dialogues that uncovers the tensions within the transfer of data.

Nick Rothwell, Interface Designer and Systems Development & Holger Deuter, 3D character designer will speak about creating a versatile and flexible creative system for experimenting with cause and effect in multiple media.

£6 / £5 Concessions / £4 ICA Members.

** SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER SPECIAL OFFER**

The first 20 people to book tickets for this talk will be able to purchase 2 for 1 tickets for a performance of Quartet (subject to availability). Offer only available via telephone bookings: call the Box Office to book on 020 7930 3647.

Emma Quinn
Director of Live and Media Arts
ICA
Visit the new ICA website www.ica.org.uk

Posted by jo at 08:21 AM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2007

RPM's Remixed

A Virtual Space "Sings"

RPM's Remixed is a telematic, transdisciplinary performance based on remixing Alvin Lucier's RPM's score – integrating dance, video and sound improvisation between artists in New York, Tampa, and San Jose.

Alvin Lucier, a well-known composer of music and sound installations that explore natural phenomena and resonance, is renowned for making spaces "sing." This piece explores the possibilities of using one of his scores to make a virtual space "sing" by using improvisational techniques as well as the natural feedback and delay created by streaming.

Themes exploring isolation, intersection, and madness reverberate through images, body and sound. Dancers and sound artists in San Jose, Tampa, and New York collaborate while realtime processing of the video images is driven partially by the performers’ movements. Motion analysis is sent over the network to trigger aspects of video manipulation, further blurring the lines of authorship and contributing to the impromptu chemistry.

Lucier’s original “RPM’s” score was a tongue-in-cheek take on creating sound based on depressing and releasing the accelerator of an Aston Martin engine. The score itself is a series of nonsensical curvatures and dashes – nonsensical, that is, until a personal interpretation of each written gesture is applied.

Taking this a step further, the cast of RPM’s Remixed deconstructs the score, into dance gestures, violin strokes, guitar riffs, and sound and video mashing. The challenge is not only to collaborate within one’s own medium but to improvise successfully between mediums and within a virtual space. Can the magic of improvisation reach across the ether? [via Rhizome]

Posted by jo at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2007

Anna Halprin: Dance/Art Experiments

Lecture and Workshop

Graduate Lecture Series presents Anna Halprin: Dance/Art Experiments :: January 31, 2007 from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM :: USC Roski School of Fine Arts / Watt Hall 104, 3001 S. Flower St., University Park Campus, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0292 :: Telephone: 213.740.2787 /Fax: 213.740.8938 :: more info: slockhar[at] usc.edu

Anna Halprin has been working in the field of dance since the late 1930's creating revolutionary directions for the form and inspiring fellow choreographers to take modern and post modern dance to new dimensions: from theatrical production, to teaching, to improvisation, to celebrations of modern ritual and myth, to environmental and street dance, to multi-cultural collaborations, and dances fostering audience participation and creativity. Among her students were Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, Meredith Monk, and Robert Morris. Halprin pioneered what became known as "postmodern dance," creating work that was key to unlocking the door to experimentation in theater, music, happenings, and performance art.

"What are the possibilities for merging dance, art, and life?" In a special hands-on lecture/workshop, students will learn about Ms. Halprin's groundbreaking work in dance and education, then have the opportunity to participate in the creation of a dance-art experiment. The lecture will be followed by a workshop from 2-5 p.m. in the Roski MFA Gallery. The workshop is open to USC fine arts and dance students and others by special arrangement. Participants should bring a lunch and a scarf, and wear comfortable shoes & clothing. Please call 213.743.1804 for more information.

This event is co-sponsored by the USC Roski School of Fine Arts MFA Program and the Dance program at the USC School of Theatre.

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Alan Sondheim

Incidences rehearsal transformed into community of problematic nodes. Recorded and transformed Geneve and New York 2006-7. A tape of enumeration and Heisenberg; particles and participants appear and disappear. [via netbehaviour]

Maud Liardon, Geneve, Sw. modification of space.

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Schwelle

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@ Tesla/Transmediale 2007

Schwelle is a new media and performance project using cutting edge acoustic and interactive technologies to explore the extreme threshold states of consciousness that constitute human experience. The multi-part project uses High Definition image and multi-channel sound, interactive installation and live performance to create states of consciousness in the spectator akin to the thresholds states that one experiences at the edge of trance, sleep and death. For transmediale '07, Tesla presents parts 1 and 2.

Part 1 is a turbulent exploration told by way of image and sound of the experience undergone at the time of the dissolution of the body and of consciousness. Part 2 is a live performance in which the audience confronts a lone single performer Michael Schumacher, master improviser and long time dancer by William Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet, experiencing the traumatic transition period between death and rebirth. Utilizing wireless sensor networks in the room and on the dancer’s body, Part 2 creates a stage environment where light, sound and objects take on their own choreography, performing with Schumacher, breathing, and behaving alongside him. Where does the body end and the room begin? What happens in the threshold where body and room merge, mutually influencing and transforming each other?

Schwelle is a co-production between artists and researchers from cultural and scientific institutions in Canada, China, Germany, Holland, China, and the USA. Schwelle, Part 2 was partially developed during a project residency at Tesla in Summer 2006 and will receive its world premiere at "tesla zur transmediale".

Part I
Concept/Direction/HD Video/Sound: Chris Salter
Collaboration Sound: Daniel Moody-Grigsby and Philip Viel

Part II
Premiere: Tesla/Transmediale 2007, Berlin, February 2007
Concept/Direction: Chris Salter, in collaboration with Michael Schumacher
Dramaturgy: Heidi Gilpin
Lighting Design: Lea Xiao
Sound Design and Programming: Marije Baalman, Daniel Moody- Grigsby, Chris
Salter, Philip Viel
Interaction Design/Sensing Systems: Marije Baalman
Objects: Thomas Spier, Flora Luna
Production Stage Manager/Technical Director: Daniel Plewe
Production Assistents: Daniel Wessolek, Alexander Wilson, Brett Bergmann

Tesla: Medien-Kunst-Labor, Klosterstrasse 68, Berlin
Thursday-Saturday, February 1-3, 2007. 20:30
For tickets/more information, please visit http://kasse@tesla-berlin.de

Christopher L. Salter, Ph.D.
Asst. Professor of Computation Arts
Faculty of Fine Arts
Concordia University

Researcher_Interactive Performance and Sound Hexagram

Posted by jo at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2007

37 Isolated Events

Contemporary Butoh Dance and Immersive Video Performance

37 Isolated Events: a Contemporary Butoh Dance and Immersive Video Performance :: Thursday January 18, 2007 - 7pm :: San Francisco Asian Art Museum :: free w/ $5-after 5 pm museum admission.

Blindsight Artistic Director/Choreographer Paige Starling Sorvillo collaborates with Los Angeles-based media artist Lucy H G and UK-based Australian composer duo imaginationandmymother.

this ocean is also the desert and I am walking into a minefield, into this installed landscape this land no longer part of the soul, I swallow, I listen, I can see your body cut into foreign lands.

37 Isolated Events begins with the normal running temperature of the human body and gradually fabricates a facsimile body. Within the noise of networked society, our intimate distance and distant intimacy induce a virtual, mediated sensibility. We are anesthetized - our breath mechanized - as the human biological system becomes hybridized with the global system. At thirty-seven degrees Celsius, in isolation, we have unprecedented potential to risk exposure and make contact inside the noise of a growing global network.

San Francisco Asian Art Museum :: 200 Larkin, Samsung Hall (Civic Center BART)

37 Isolated Events is a supported in part by the Zellerbach Family Foundation and Asian American Dance Performances. Paige Starling Sorvillo is honored to be a 2007 CHIME awardee with Marc Bamuthi Joseph.

Posted by jo at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

January 11, 2007

‘SPIRAL’ by Kyoko Nagashima

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Reviewed by Yukihiko Yoshida

[Posted by Yukihiko Yoshida] ‘SPIRAL’ by Kyoko Nagashima; text by Yukihiko Yoshida (dance performance critique)

A girl begins her move slowly as the audience is adjusting their view. It is a wonderland beyond image, and it looks reachable but nobody could even touch. An illusion opens up before my eyes like when I see contemporary dancers dancing. I saw this work of Kyoko Nagashima at Gallery 360°. An ordinary girl moves slowly in the video created by a lenticular lens. Watching ‘SPIN’ and ‘RHYTHM’ displayed in the gallery, I had to stop and stare at them for a while, because I felt there was something common to contemporary dance performance.

‘SPIRAL’ and ‘BATON’ are displayed in the current show. ‘SPIRAL’ is about politics, balance, and co-existence in everyday life. A girl is only climbing up the stairs. She stops slowly, starts off, sits down, and vanishes gradually…she keeps walking in the screen. Time passes quietly in the fantasy world of images. The picture of the girl is taken by a lenticular lens, and put in the panel to be displayed.

Kyoko Nagashima says that she has been asked often if she is interested in dance performance since when she presented the work by using a lenticular lens. She worked on visual images from the beginning, and in the process of revising them to a flat level, she came up with the idea of using a lenticular lens. She recently watched the film directed by Tatsumi Hijikata and went to see the performance by Pina Bausch. The girls in her works seem to have similar personalities with those dancers like Kaoru Uchida, Natsumi Tokoro, and Hiroko Fuchizawa from Roussewaltz who is fashionable, or HO HO-DO, a dance duo who is charming and friendly, or modern contemporary dancers like Satoko Yahagi and Hisano Yamanaka, who remind us of Alice in a big city (ex. in Yahagi's work,"Alicetopia"), or Chizuru Inagawa who shows off cute, but transparent sense of being. The girls are not dancers in Nagashima’s videos, but they are models whom people do not recognize. She says that she is interested in the feeling of the presence of a person. ‘Existing’, ‘being there’, ‘standing there’…out of this query, her creation is made somewhere where a link to reality is missing. The human figure in the video moves slowly and sits down. Then, the same person reappears, overlaps with the past image, and goes off to the side.

This kind of portrait of human being looks unreal and it has something in common with stage lighting. Like a photograph inverted by solarization, when an image is overlapped with another, unrealistic world is opening up in front of your eyes. ‘BATON’ (2006) is presented for the exhibition entitled A-LUNCH. This is a unique project in such a way that a waiter delivers an artwork to a customer at the table. Her artwork is in a box like a jewelry box delivered to the table. Open the box to find a portable device. It seems that Kyoko Nagashima is interested in the history of visual culture in a broader sense. A girl is standing ordinarily in the screen of the portable device, slowly lifting up her elbow to bend her arm, at the next moment, she is swiftly strolling away. The timing or an empty moment of her move tend to grow longer without any excitement, and it reminds me of the contemporary dance performance by Mariko Okamoto of "sputnik*gilu". The idea of this video is to hand over a baton to a viewer from inside the screen. There is no sense of relaying a baton in there. Images overlap one after another. A fantasy world and slowly passing time are continuing on in the small device on the palm of a hand.

Kyoko Nagashima once published booklets entitled, ‘ROUND’ and ‘WINK’ (1997), which focus on human motions of moving legs and blinking. At this early stage of her career, she tried to deal with the ‘phenomenon of someone being there’. This idea made her to create ‘DOOR’, ‘SPIN’, ‘RHYTHM’(2005), which portray a girl in everyday life in an imaginary building or a gymnastic hall. In ‘DOOR’, a girl is standing still in front of the door. In ‘RHYTHM’, ribbons are laid all over the floor of the gymnastic hall, and it gives the image of rhythmic gymnastics. It will be no exaggeration to say that this video evokes dance or performance. In reality, when Kyoko Nagashima composes moves for the model to do, she has the images in advance. ‘Two most important factors are open space and its corresponding moves,’ she says. Each move is absolutely natural in the context, and she never gives a meaning to it, according to her. The moves happen spontaneously on the spot and she shoots. This attitude is found in professional dancers and choreographers as well. The finished images are transferred in the form of a panel.

She studied oil painting at school and did drawing of human bodies on iron. Iron is a hard material, but it is something that rusts and decays to her. It is just like a human body. She used to take photographs of human bodies just for the record as a part of making artworks, and this is how she becomes a visual artist. It is a sincere fact that she cannot be categorized merely in a video artist or a fashionable boom. She is more than that. Unfortunately the overall tone underlying her work gives a vague impression whether she is willing or not, because the image that she creates could be regarded as just another nostalgic picture in our mind. She will need to take one step further to impress herself as an artist in this world. (At Gallery 360°4th August,2006)

Kyoko Nagashima:
tokyo-artists kyoko nagashima art works http://www.tokyo-arts.jp/kyokonagashima.html

Cf. Related Japanese Dance Artists

Roussewaltz:
http://www.tokyo-arts.jp/kyokonagashima.html
Satoko Yahagi and also Hisano Yamanaka, Satoko Yahagi "Alicetopia" and Mariko Okamoto "sputnik*gilu" http://www.turbulence.org/blog/archives/000660.html#comments
Ho-Ho-Do
http://hoho-do.net/

Posted by jo at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)

December 19, 2006

Dance and Process

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New Work

Dance and Process: Daniel Linehan, Melanie Maar, and Jillian Peña :: The Kitchen :: Wednesday, December 20, 8pm; Thursday, December 21, 8pm :: Tickets $10 :: Curated by Miguel Gutierrez ::

The culmination of a seven-week group process of sharing work and receiving structured feedback, this evening features new work by choreographers Daniel Linehan, Melanie Maar, and Jillian Peña. In Human Content Pile, Daniel Linehan probes his own choreographic process from an objective and amoral perspective in order to create a structure based on the incessant daily accumulation of material. Linehan collaborates with dancers Anna Carapetyan, Natalie Green, Michael Helland, and Miriam Wolf, along with Minneapolis-based writer/composer Erik Belgum, who provides a text-based score. Choreographed by Melanie Maar, DOPA - Duo in Process translates the symptoms of a body with neurological dysfunction into the arena of choreography and performance. Two women relate in an environment where the interplay of conscious and subconscious triggers stimulate their bodies to move. The performers are Mariangela Lopez and Maar, and a sound collaboration with Dylan Stanfield. In search of transcendence, Jillian Peña invites the audience to The Promised Land--an imaginary landscape of dreams and opportunities. The Promised Land is an interactive video experience.

Box Office: 212-255-5793 ext. 11. Box Office Hours: Tue-Sat, 2-6pm

The Kitchen is located at 512 West 19th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues.
Subway: A, C, E to 14th Street; 1 to 18th Street; L to 8th Avenue.

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November 21, 2006

The Kitchen presents

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Dance without Bodies

Koosil-ja's Dance without Bodies :: The Kitchen :: Dec 6-9 (Wednesday-Saturday) 8pm :: Tickets $12.

Dance Without Bodies is a new, commissioned, dance and multi-media performance by Bessie award-winning choreographer Koosil-ja that questions the fundamental role of “presence” in performance and forges new relationships among dancers, technologies, and the audience. In this new work, two dancers move between the space of the stage and that of video projections, performing simultaneous yet spatially disconnected solos for an audience seated in two separate areas, situated back-to-back in the theater. Created through her “live processing” performance method, which she developed with dancer Melissa F. Guerrero and Geoff Matters (music, video, and software design), the performance is different each night, as the movement in the work is neither strictly set choreography nor pure improvisation. Rather, the dancers generate their solos nightly, in real-time, in response to the action depicted on three different videos, which are randomly combined each evening on clustered sets of monitors. The piece also includes lighting design by Jane Shaw, video design by Benton-C Bainbridge, and graphic design by Pascale Willi.

Box Office: 212-255-5793 ext. 11. Box Office Hours: Tue-Sat, 2-6pm

The Kitchen is located at 512 West 19th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues.
Subway: A, C, E to 14th Street; 1 to 18th Street; L to 8th Avenue.

Posted by jo at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2006

String Beings

Manipulating and Manipulated

String Beings is the result of an exciting collaboration between Snappy Dance Theater, Jonathan Bachrach, Lucia Lin and Berlin composer Michael Rodach exploring the subject of manipulation through the interaction of multiple media. “String Beings” explores the relationship between manipulating and being manipulated, using a variety of metaphors ranging from the literal (individuals playing string instruments, individuals being pulled by strings) to the complex (dancers manipulating musicians, dancers manipulating images created through their interaction with technology, technology manipulating the audience by transforming reality into a “new” and projected reality). Snappy's physical style and artistic approach of using irony as an essential tool of expression even for complex or sometimes serious topics blends well with Jonathan Bachrach's ability to turn a profoundly human dance expression into a paralles univers of doubt, deception and surprise.

“String Beings” will be a compilation of several sections that alternate interactions between musicians and dancers, dancers and technology, and all three elements. The musicians will be part of the choreography to such an extent that at one point, Lucia Lin will be integrated into the acrobatic movement while playing the violin. Berlin composer Michael Rodach created the 60-minute sound score for The Temperamental Wobble in 2004 and will compose “String Beings” to be a mix of electronic music with live strings.

At the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center :: November 17th & 18th at 8:00 pm :: 41 Second Street, Cambridge, MA :: Tickets.

Approximate Length: 40 minutes (one half program)
6 dancers, 3 musicians (2 recruited locally), 1 computer artist
Choreography: Martha Mason/Snappy Dance Theater
New Media Artist: Jonathan Bachrach
Violin: Lucia Lin
Set Design: Chris Fitch
Lighting Design: Joseph Levendusky
Music: Michael Rodach

Founded in 1997, Snappy Dance Theater is led by Co-Founder and Artistic Director Martha Mason. "Snappy" has grown to become the most active contemporary dance company in Massachusetts, and has the 12th largest audience of all performing arts organization in the Boston area. Snappy has been presented in 18 U.S. states and 4 international countries; has received critical acclaim in major publications (The New York Times and Dance Magazine); and has received major commissions including Bank of America CelebritySeries commission of The Temperamental Wobble in 2004,
presented at the Cutler Majestic Theater. Snappy's mission is inspire audiences and to make dance and theater more accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds.

Jonathan Bachrach, Ph.D. is an artist and research scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. He researches robotics, sensor networks, programming languages, and new art making platforms. Bachrach's artwork has been shown at the MIT Media Lab, Dance Theatre Workshop (NY), Eyebeam Gallery (NY), at several Boston galleries, and at Festival du Nouvelle Cinema in Montreal. In collaboration with Dan Paluska and Brian Knep, Bachrach leads the Collision Collective and curates exhibitions of art technology with MIT and Boston-based artists.

Lucia Lin has been a prizewinner of numerous competitions, including the 1990 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. She has performed in solo recitals throughout the U.S., making her New York debut at Weill Recital Hall in 1991, and has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Oklahoma Symphony, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and Festivalorchester in Graz, Austria. Lin is a member of the Muir String Quartet, and a founding member of the Boston Trio and the chamber group, Innuendo.

Posted by jo at 02:03 PM | Comments (0)

October 31, 2006

Klaus Obermaier

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Le Sacre du Printemps

Media-artist, director and composer Klaus Obermaier has created a new performance of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s classical ballet Le Sacre du Printemps. In Obermaier’s version, the classical ballet is expressed in the form of an interactive music, dance and 3D project.

On stage distributed stereo-cameras and a complex computer system transfer the dancer Julia Mach into a virtual three-dimensional space. Time layers and unusual views overlay and multiply themselves and enable a completely new perception of the body and its courses of motion. Real-time generated virtual spaces communicate and interact with the dancer. By means of 32 microphones the entire orchestra is integrated in the interactive process as well. Musical motifs, individual voices and instruments influence the form, movement and complexity of both the 3D projections of the virtual space and those of the dancer. As such, music is no longer only starting point, but also completion of the choreography.

Klaus Obermaier’s version of Le Sacre du Printemps was performed first at this year’s Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. [blogged by Lene Mailund on Digital Experience]

Posted by jo at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2006

Ah-ha: Narrative Structures in Reactive and Interactive Video Art

Connecting the Physical and the Digital

[Image left: "Guillotine" by Steve Shoffner) "Performance is so many things: the synchronized sounds of a symphony; actions with words in a play; steps and turns in a dance; words from a pulpit. Performance art, too, is variable, perhaps too multifarious to define, even with semicolons. At traditional performances with traditional support materials, from symphonies with program notes to theatre productions with playbills, performance acts as replay, a repeat of an event, a memorization of a string of notes or a set of lines, a reformulation of a tested formula. Then there are those performances that vary, that respond to the moment, that unfold through the implementation of chance or improvisation or, more and more, digitization. With the insertion of new technologies into performance, the question arises – do actions result from numbers? What indeed is the connection between the physical and the digital? Does the digital component determine the performance, or do actions generate a numeric pattern, which then underlies the piece's structure?

The aesthetic and conceptual import of digital performance pieces is linked to the ordering of a piece's technological components. Random sequencing is one form of structuring immersive environments or data-triggered scenes. Fixed sequencing of scenes, with a predetermined index of performed actions and triggered events, follows a preset score. Alternately, sensory responsive improvisation is flexible and often produces variations in structure. In each case, the piece's content is the result of a digital system: programming or computer responses to external stimuli determine how the performance plays out. Even interactive improvisation, in which a human action triggers a computerized event, is a digital system, albeit one that emphasizes the human element, or input, in that system. The content of an interactive piece is closely related to its structure – the interaction between trigger, whether generated by the viewer or performer, and event. Interesting variations in content emerge when the structure becomes the art.

Below, by electronic interview, four new media artists describe their modes of working with interactive technologies and probe the relationship between order and content in their work. Johannes Birringer makes telematic connections in performance, installation, and video. Mark Coniglio co-directs the interactive dance company, Troika Ranch, with Dawn Stoppiello; he both designed and implements the interactive software, Isadora. Cat Jones' alternate persona catgURL interacts with viewers while performing live on and off the screen. Steve Shoffner instigates interactions with viewers while performing simultaneously on video and within his installations." From Ah-ha: Narrative Structures in Reactive and Interactive Video Art by L. Hermes Griesbach, VJ Theory: ART, 12/10/06.

Posted by jo at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2006

eyeSpace

Merce + Rouse + iPod + Joyce

Last week, audience members enjoyed a unique experience in maverick choreographer Merce Cunningham’s newest piece, eyeSpace. Using iPod Shuffles, each member of the audience heard different pieces of composer Mikel Rouse’s score, International Cloud Atlas. The audience was provided with iPod shuffles, set to play the score’s tracks in a random order, giving each viewer a distinct viewing experience.

Audience members were requested to bring their own iPods, loaded with the score they downloaded from this page, to play during the performance of eyeSpace. For those who didn't have their own iPods, iPod Shuffles were available for use on loan (at no cost) at The Joyce Theater.

With your ticket purchase, audience members were also entitled to receive a free download of select tracks from Mikel Rouse’s score. [via Great Dance]

Posted by jo at 06:56 PM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2006

Jonah Bokaer

Dancing Up a Storm of Radical Doubt

Dancing Up a Storm of Radical Doubt by Jonah Bokaer: Flashing as dismissive an attitude toward status quo as Merce Cunningham—whose company he dances for—Brooklyn-based dancer Jonah Bokaer and the artists’ collective Chez Bushwick have recently initiated a nomadic experimental dance laboratory called AMBUSH. Each monthly installment of the program occupies a different loft space in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. An outgrowth of Chez Bushwick’s remarkably successful SHTUDIO SHOW, AMBUSH is identified by the collective as “an ambulatory new program of dance, performance, and related forms.” NYFA Current asked Bokaer, Chez Bushwick’s manager and founder, to explain the evolution of the collective, their propensity for rigorous interviews of critics and curators, and how no reviews are allowed. [continue reading at NYFA]

Posted by jo at 07:13 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2006

ICH² - INTERMEDIA DANCE PERFORMANCE FOR PLANETARIUMS

360 Degree Projection meets Motion-Tracking

ICH² - INTERMEDIA DANCE PERFORMANCE FOR PLANETARIUMS [Premiered on June 8, 2006 at the Mediadome in Kiel, Germany. The Programm will be resumed at the Mediadome in Kiel in February 2007.]

The performance ICH² combines dance and media art with complex content and attractive use of cross-media. Art and technology synergetically combine to a creative game on duplication and variation. ICH² is merging the components into a hybrid amalgamation, which creates a digital space of possibilities, which is not only reflecting the perspectives of genetechnology, but offers the visitor a new space for experience.

An intruiging atmosphere is created by the interaction between stage and the projection onto the dome. A unique installation for an extra-ordinary space: a planetarium including a 360 degrees moving image projection. State-of-the-art projection technology is merging with dance theatre and interactive media into a fascinating wholesome piece of art, is modifying it and allowing a completely new kind of production: dancer and media together create an artistic space that involves the audience in a new way. The impact of the imagery and the intensively short proximity of the performers, forms a high level of immersion.

Hardly has a visitor been closer to the dancers. This turns standard planetariums into experiental Digital Theatres, in which man and technology can be part of a unique symbiosys.

Tracking Bodies

The main area of research for project ReACT was the further development of the Tracking-technology in regard of the spacial and technical characteristics of planetariums. While usually only linear image sets were shown, the use of reactive software allowed interactivity and manipulation of the projected content.

Concept: With the help of installed cameras and sensors attached to the performer’s body, movements in the space can be tracked and transmitted to a computer system. A specially programmed software interprets the dancer’s movements in real-time, which in turn is then projected onto the dome as interactive projection and stage backdrop. This allows to create a digital double of the dancer: Motion Tracking as duplication process.

In this way a reactive visual and audio world is created, that synergetically re-interprets the image and audio composition.

Posted by jo at 06:32 PM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2006

DANCEPOD 2006

A Sculpture Composed of Simultaneous, Web-Connected Dance Parties

DANCEPOD 2006: On September 9th at 11pm in Portland, 12 am in Guadalajara, 2am in New York City, 3am in Mexico City and 7am in Berlin, dancepod will present an entirely new kind of sculpture. A sculpture composed of simultaneous, web-connected dance parties. The parties, coordinated and developed in conjunction with artists and presenters from each city, will utilize identical dancepod installations. The installations will become the core of a shared physical and virtual experience, supporting streaming video and music as well as live DJ’s, VJ’s, and surprising guest artists. Moving bodies of dancing participants will complete the sculpture.

As part of the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's (PICA) Time-Based Art (TBA) Festival, in conjunction with PS122, Scene Downtown (Earl Dax), Harkness A/V (Nick Hallett), and technical directors Kraft + Purver, these 4 DANCEPOD sites will be linked by live video starting at 2:00 AM Eastern Standard Time.

NYC DANCEPOD features an eclectic array of New York artists. Join DJs Kevin Graves (Brite Bar) and Van Scott (Patricia Field's Party at element) and dance to visuals artists assembled by Nick Hallett and Harkness A/V, including Chika and Boris. Live performances by John Moran and Saori Tsukada, Sxip Shirey, and Glenn Marla.

Chez Bushwick will be hosting "The Changing of the Garde" starting at 8:00 PM on Saturday. Come early for DANCEPOD and enjoy performances by:

Wanjiru Kamuyu – Spiral
Jim Staley – Solo Trombone
Bruce Nauman - “Abstracting A Shoe (1966)” – Video Art
David Vaughan, Michael Cole, Jonah Bokaer – A John Cage Birthday Reading
Elke Rindfleisch - Untitled

Also... TECHNOPIA Interviews Carla Peterson, Newly-Appointed Artistic Director of DTW.

All this for $5. Come to both the Chez Bushwick and DANCEPOD events for just $10! That's like seeing the early show for FREE! (Regular DANCEPOD admission is $10).

Hosted By
3rd Ward Brooklyn
195 Morgan Ave.
Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY 11206
718.715.4961
www.3rdwardbrooklyn.org

Posted by jo at 05:46 PM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2006

"Echo" at the Tate Modern

3D Point-Clouds in Real Time

UnitedVisualArtists have just uploaded on their website a video of their latest project, Echo. The 8-minute live performance piece was commissioned by Vamp and produced in collaboration with Mimbre for a launch in the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern in London. I found the video so beautiful that I pestered UVA with questions. Ash Nehru kindly answered me.

What's the technology behind Echo?

The LED screen we used was a Lighthouse R10 LED screen, 8m wide by 11m high. We used the Point Grey Labs' Bumblebee2 stereo camera system, mounted at the foot of the stage, and used our own proprietary software (dragonfly3) to render the resulting 3D point-cloud in real time. The motion of the 'virtual camera' was scripted within D3.

How about the collaboration with the dancers, Mimbre and choreographer Flick Ferdinando? How did it go?

Because we had very little rehearsal time (5 days), the dancers assembled the performance from sequences taken from their existing show, but simplified and slowed down to create a dreamlike, 'sculptural' effect. We set up the bumblebee system so that the choreographer could select moves that worked best for the camera.

Aside from offering our opinions as to which music worked best with which moves, we exercised as little control over the choreography as possible.

Once the choreography was fixed, we recorded the performance to create a 3D video file, which was then used to sequence the camera moves.

The idea for the performance came from our original work with the bumblebee system, an interactive installation called Mirror that we presented in the Kemistry gallery in horeditch, London. The particular rendering style we used for that project was developed slightly to work better with the LED screen.

Thanks Ash!

If you're in Northern Europe, Austin or Los Angeles, chances are that you can catch up with the work of UnitedVisualArtists, they are currently touring with Massive Attack.

More Interview of UnitedVisualArtists; their video for Colder. [blogged by Régine on we-make-money-not-art]

Posted by jo at 07:58 PM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2006

APPARITION II

Furthering the Aesthetics of Body Projection

APPARITION II (World Premiere) Klaus Obermaier X Ars Electronica Futurelab :: 16-17.9.2006 (Sat-Sun) 8pm :: Auditorium, Kwai Tsing Theatre :: Details.

The camera based motion tracking system developed for APPARITION uses complex computer vision algorithms to extract the performer's moving outline or shape from the background to provide constantly updating information for a body projection as well as qualitative calculations of certain motion dynamics, e.g. speed, direction, intensity and volume. The information derived from these calculations is assigned dynamically to the real-time generation of visuals that are projected either directly back onto the body and/or as large-scale background projection. The precise synchronization of projections on the background and the bodies result in the materialization of an overall immersive kinetic space or a virtual architecture that can be simultaneously fluid and rigid, that can expand and contract, ripple, bend and distort in response to or an influence upon the movement of the performers.

Klaus Obermaier began with the production of D.A.V.E. (2000) (Digital Amplified Video Engine), a solo dance theater work, using a unique approach to moving body projections that fused body and image into a consistent narrative. Following the success of D.A.V.E. (having performed over eighty shows in eighteen countries), Obermaier embarked on the creation of another media and dance performance work, VIVISECTOR (2002). Neither of these works used interactive technologies, but relied on a creative and precise combination of set choreography, staging and recorded video.

Obermaier decided to further develop the aesthetics of body projection by making a piece that would use interactive technologies to release the performer from the determination of set choreography and would use digital media performance software to generate the video and sound content in real-time. Discussions with engineers and designers at the Ars Electronica Futurelab about building the interactive and real time generation system, and involvement in the organisation of the DAMPF_lab (Dance and Media Performance Fusions - a European joint performing arts / technologies research project) stimulated the initiation of the APPARITION (2004) and APPARITION II (2006).

Posted by jo at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2006

Wald-Forest

Responsive Architecture + Organism

Wald-Forest by Chris Ziegler :: a forest is both an architecture and also a organism. Forests are areas outside of civilization and human culture, ambivalent places of fears and inspiring fantasies. Wald-Forest is an interactive installation, a performance environment for dance, light, electronic sound and life piano. Neon lamps, hung in a matrix of 16 - 64 units, create a forest-like interactive matrix of light emmitting objects.

The installation is designed to be a light-architecture and also a responisve, digital organism. Moving in it can be as simple and playful as a shadowplay, but there is also disorientation in a matrix of light objects. The indeterminacy of places like this is most interesting to us. Wald-Forest's interactive light and surround sound architecture is related to the movement parameters of the dancer / the audience. The motion tracking parameters are: position and speed of movement.

Wald-Forest defines performative zones by light, shadow and sound. The performer / audience shapes and alters performative acoustic and light - zones by his own movement in realtime. In the live performance we will develop a duet for piano and dance. Real time notation instructions will be sent to the piano player according the dancer‘s movements patterns in space. Composed music parts will interact with algorithms of interactive sound.

concept, director: Chris Ziegler (D)
dance: Christine Bürkle (D)
music: Sandeep Bhagwati (D/IND)
prepared piano: Ernst Surberg (D)

Wald-Forest will be perfomed at Pas de Deux - Dance and New Media Performances, workshops, filmscreenings and interactive installation :: July 29-30 :: Edith Russ Site for Media Art :: Chris Ziegler will be on site for a talk.

The Edith Russ Site for Media Art, the Association for Youth Culture Engagement and the Kulturetage Oldenburg present a series of events which broach the issue of dance and new media. From 28 July until 6 August well known dancers, choreographers and dance companies as well as media artists will give a guest performance. The events will take place at the Edith Russ Site for Media Art and at the Kulturetage Oldenburg. Furthermore workshops will be offered in order to give an impression about dance and new media and to make first experience with "digital dance".

Posted by jo at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)

July 27, 2006

Cultural Control and Policy on Dance in Asia-Pacific Region

Call for Participation and Partners

[posted by Yukihiko YOSHIDA] Archive/Database: Publication and Material list for Cultural Control and Policy on Dance in Asia-Pacific Region :: Call for Participation and Partners :: Yaping Chen, PhD (Taiwan) :: Yukihiko YOSHIDA (Japan) :: The study in cultural control and policy would be an important field in dance research now, especially when we analyze the development of dance in Asia Pacific Region. Hence, a multi-lingual online archive serving as an exchange platform for research materials will greatly enhance cross-cultural research and understanding of this specific subject.

Now the first ever project in this regard is underway. As the first step, Yukihiko Yoshida and Dr. Yaping Chen are making publication and material lists for cultural policy related to dance under Japanese Colonialism before WW2. Even in Japan, this is still a hidden subject in both Japanese and Asian dance history researches. Yukihiko is currently compiling such a list within Japan. Related materials in difference languages are believed to exist in countries ranging from Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea to South-east Asian countries such as Malaysia. All the contributed lists will be credited with the contributors’ names and shared in the online archive.

Cultural policy under Japanese colonialism is just the beginning of the project, and compiling lists are but the first step. We hope to include publication and material lists from the more recent past in the archive as well. The ultimate goal of the project is to facilitate and promote researches in the relationship between cultural policy and dance throughout Asia-Pacific Region. In the future, cross-national research projects may be conducted through the international connections made possible by this online archive.

We look forward to welcoming new members and partners.

contact address: Yukihiko YOSHIDA, yukihiko9[at]s6.dion.ne.jp

Posted by jo at 02:45 PM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2006

Tap-n-bass

Interactive Dance Technology

Within the field of interactive dance technology, a number of projects have experimented with dancers producing music in real time from their body movements, as opposed to following the music. In MusicViaMotion (2000) for example, dance movements are captured with a video camera and mapped to sound synthesis in real time. In MIT Medialab's Expressive Footwear project (1998) and Katherine Moriwaki's Music Shoes (2000), the dancers wear sport shoes respectively chinese slippers, equipped with a range of sensors. In Alfred Desio's Zapped Taps, sensors are also used, this time on tap shoes. In all these projects, the sensed movements actuate and modulate artificial sounds.

In Tap-n-bass, we took a technological step back and used the actual acoustic sounds produced by the tap shoes instead of sensor data about the dancer's movements. Tap-n-bass is an improvised tap dance performance where the sounds of wired-up tap shoes are picked-up by piezo contact microphones and remixed live, resulting in drum-n-bass-inspired music.

Drum-n-bass is one of the most exhilarating music styles that have emerge during the last few years. Noticing pattern similarities between certain rhythms in drum-n-bass and in tap dancing, we decided to see what would happen if we crossed these two genres. In Tap-n-bass, we aimed at making a tap dance performance that would produce booming bass and fast syncopated rhythms reminiscent of drum-n-bass, while staying true to the genre of tradition of tap dancing and its characteristic sound. The music is produced live by sounds picked-up by contact microphones attached on the shoes. The sounds are filtered and remixed live through a mixer board and custom-made program run on a laptop. The Tap-n-bass performance is improvised and collaborative, in terms of the dialogue established between the laptop remixer and the tap dancers. [via nicolas on pasta and vinegar]

Posted by jo at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2006

SEA UNSEA

dans-architecture

Sea Unsea takes place on an interactive stage informed by a camera interface. On an empty floor and beneath a slanted cloud canopy, four performers begin by simply walking. As they cross the floor, their movements affect a sonorous field of sound while tides of virtual sea meadows are projected onto the canopy above. Capturing the fleeting forms of this virtual sea, the performers play and explore, attracting, repulsing and entwining their bodies and voices within the evolving patterns of a swirling hynotic synthetic sea. Testing the physical and emotional thresholds that separate them from the rootless sea meadow the work develops through repetitive tides of action. Across time the sea gradually evolves as a growing ecology embedding the presence of the performers as mnemonic traces within a dense field.

Sea Unsea is an interactive dans-architecture conceived by between architect Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and choreographer Carol Brown and developed in collaboration with Chiron Mottram and Alan Penn from the Virtual Reality Centre for the Built Environment, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

Sea Unsea builds on Carol Brown and Mette Ramsgard Thomsen's former collaborations, The Changing Room and Spawn.

Research Questions: Sea Unsea explores new intersections between embodied interface design and an intelligent digital environment. By adapting the Virtual Reality Centre's crowd visualisation software, we are investigating the making of a digital ecology of virtual agents acting and reacting on the presence of the performer. The agents can be understood as a swarm of digital beings that interact with each other as well as react to changes in their environment. Defined by low-level rules that lead to the emergence of a high-level patterning, the agents inhabit the two dimensional surface of the camera picture plane. As they seek to navigate the plane, drawn by defined points of attraction, and hindered by shades of darkness, they encounter the performers, negotiating their presence, confronting, traversing, intersecting or evading their image.

Posted by jo at 07:09 PM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2006

Chasing Pools and Sampling Ghats

HIDRAZONE ISSUE 002 X 2

Chasing the Pools is an immersive performance/installation working with integra-ting the live presence of dancers into the landscape of a multi-channel live-mix video installation. Often the two present very different viewing circumstances that remain independent of one another.

Through live-feed cameras the movement of dancers was mixed into the alpha channel of 3 video mixes. Their lit bodies became one moving image, dematerializing or re-materializing the body, while the background remained another. The dancers were able to monitor how they were affecting the composited image, essentially dancing with the image.

These channels were projected onto numerous scrims in a large tree grove. Twelve channels of sound by live musicians were mixed and spatialized throughout the site. The architecture of a tree grove naturally imposed a de-centralized structure upon the viewer where one’s experience was shaped by the act of meandering through, never being allowed a view of the whole.

Samples of the Ghats is a responsive installation that invites the audience to explore the ghats of Haridwar, India by composing themselves its audio-visual atmosphere.

A 5 metre long structure featuring a panorama of the ancient and holy city of Haridwar framed with technology is a stimulus to curiosity, an appeal to exploration. Cruising along the panel visitors soon discover that they can "play it." With the simple move of his hands he launches media sequences. They are audio and visual samples, pieces of Haridwar, collected and edited in a way to generate an atmospheric feel of the ghats.

In a collective experience, the panorama comes to life and the adventure begins.

More Hidrazone Issue 002: Performativity

Posted by jo at 07:26 PM | Comments (0)

June 24, 2006

Nathaniel Stern: Creative Commons Artist in Residence

Shares [odys]elicit Under CC/GPL

Friday 23 June 2006, live from the iCommons iSummit:

[odys] elicit - a full-body, interactive art installation circa 2001 - is now available under a Creative Commons By Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license, and the source code is available under GPL. It works with almost any standard webcam (requiring a few drivers on PC)!

[odys]elicit is a large scale, interactive installation where every movement of the viewer, small or sweeping, births stuttering text onscreen. The viewer’s motion elicits, character by character, passages from odys’ text. The piece responds to small movements, writing the text onscreen slowly for the viewer to read, or to rapid passersby, whose full bodies birth hundreds of flying characters, impossible to decode.

In odys’ work, viewers are forced to look at the spaces between language and meaning, the luxuries of stuttering and silence as communication, and the effects of accelerated and decelerated time. [odys]elicit physically places viewers at the center of co-invented noise, forced to perform - willingly or not. odys’ text has been reduced down to where it no longer has meaning and is re-birthed, with possibly infinite meanings, or none at all.

Click here to see videos of the piece in action.

Downloading:

Please first check out the read_me file - the PC application requires some extra (free) installs, and you can very easily change video settings or sources, input new text, toggle between birthing letters or full words, adjust the motion tracking tolerance levels given different lighting, or change the direction the text will go on the fly! Send me error messages if you encounter any bugs, or have much success! I am yet to fully test the OS 9 or PC versions. Oh, and about any parties or exhibitions that this thing is a hit at, too ;)

read_me.rtf
OS X Application
OS 9 Application
PC Application (still testing)
Source Code (in Director/Lingo + TTC-Pro; demo versions of these will work)

@ Rio iSummit [posted by nathaniel on nathanielstern.com]

Posted by jo at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

networked_performance

a research blog about network-enabled performance

links

June 29, 2007

Double Skin/Double Mind

Experience a workshop, virtually

June 22, 2007

Merce Cunningham - Biped

June 20, 2007

Locus Tangent Return

June 01, 2007

UNIQLO MIXPLAY

May 29, 2007

Reconfigurable Costume

A Platform for Interactive Performance

May 21, 2007

Technologically Expanded Dance

Call for Participation

May 17, 2007

Men in the Wall

May 11, 2007

Merce Cunningham Dance Company

Site-Specific, Participatory Experiences

May 10, 2007

mech[a]OUTPUT

koosil-ja / danceKUMIKO

Synk

Real-time Processing

April 24, 2007

Opensource: {Videodance} Symposium

Call for Proposals

April 23, 2007

Of Skins and Screens: Hyperdance, Haptic Cinema, and Contact Improvisation

Somnambules

April 19, 2007

The Reception

Performance + Discussion

The Reception

Performance + Discussion

March 10, 2007

Other Stories

An Evening of Interactive Arts

February 28, 2007

turned

Resampled Dancer

February 14, 2007

Temporal Interference

An Exploration of Space and Memory

February 08, 2007

My First Second Life Dance Performance

February 07, 2007

V2_Lab presents

Test_Lab--Dancing-around-technology

February 01, 2007

Quartet

Virtual Dancer

January 24, 2007

RPM's Remixed

A Virtual Space "Sings"

January 18, 2007

Anna Halprin: Dance/Art Experiments

Lecture and Workshop

Alan Sondheim

Schwelle

@ Tesla/Transmediale 2007

January 15, 2007

37 Isolated Events

Contemporary Butoh Dance and Immersive Video Performance

January 11, 2007

‘SPIRAL’ by Kyoko Nagashima

Reviewed by Yukihiko Yoshida

December 19, 2006

Dance and Process

New Work

November 21, 2006

The Kitchen presents

Dance without Bodies

November 13, 2006

String Beings

Manipulating and Manipulated