Tuesday, 29 January 2008

Loopy Logic

Doug sets up a scenario in a program called Isadora for the Group Show "family" portrait studio and says that it's a great program for live video manipulation, etc.
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I start researching Isadora and other object oriented programming
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My brain hurts, so I start researching artists
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I find out that Laurie Anderson worked with a video artist called Mark Coniglio on her current project (which I am seeing April 30! wee!)
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I think "hm, Mark Conigilio, that sounds familiar."
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Mark Coniglio wrote Isadora (see above)

Enough of this annoying format:
Conigilio is also one of the artistic directors of a multimedia/dance company called Troika Ranch. Their most recent piece is called "Loop Diver." I want to read the blog they have about it in more detail, but I have an initial reaction to some videos they've posted on YouTube. It seems like in their video BKLYN and in devising the choreography in Loop Diver, they are using the technology to drive what the human bodies are doing. In descriptions of other works on their website, the have developed tools that trigger sound, video and graphical images that respond to the shape and movement quality of the dancers, but aren't necessarily of the dancers. Particularly sound seems to be some pre-recorded composition that isn't based on the sounds coming from the performers.

Contrast to some of my interests:
- the body of the performer triggers the sound and video
- that sound and video content is the performers' body (movement, sound, speech), not just triggered by it.

here are some of Troika Ranch's video sketches (I also like the fact that they're posting sketches of their process):






This last one is a bit bausea inducing as it goes along and not recommended if you are seizure prone. Otherwise, very interesting experiment and the first bit before it gets all manic is so beautiful.

2 comments:

Laura Bean said...

Hello!

Just read your blog - I really like the videos that you posted.

I am a little confused as to how the technology is driving the bodies of the performers... I know that this may be my lack of understanding of the technology that they are using, but it seems that the performance is coming first and then the technology is manipulating it after. If this is the case I can't grasp how it would be driving them?

Mz. Noodle said...

And now I can respond to this to, now that it's been released from the holding pen!

For the piece that is demo'd by the male dancer in the clips I posted, the whole process appears to be:

a) dancer created a phrase (first video clip)
b) Mark C. manipulates the video (second video clip)
c) dancer uses the manipulated video as the final choreography.

So it's a conversation back and forth between the dancer's body and the technology. The final dance seems like it would be much more difficult because it has to incorporate (literally!) those jerky video motions into it. I would really love to see the final result. Very interesting process for choreographing a piece.

We did an exercise in the performance workshop over the weekend that reminded me of this process. The room was divided on 2 axes with the middle being neutral, normal movement. Moving along one axis either sped up or slowed down the movement. Moving along the other axis either made you repeat your action (or a piece of it), or put gaps into it. Don't know if I've described it so well here. IT WAS REALLY HARD! But something that one does easily and often in a video manipulation software.

You should definitely come to one of the Gary Stephens workshops @ ArtsAdmin. Interesting stuff. Only once a month.