today was that day when you feel like things are going really well and you are then fed a huge lump of humble pie. As your computer keeps crashing. over. and over. and over.
I figured it all out, and as much as I say I'm about exposing my process here, I doubt that you really want to hear me discussing the maddening nature of debugging sound and video capture optimization in Isadora. However, if you're geek like that and would like to know my beginner's woes, please leave a comment and I will happily go into more details.
As it is, I will say that the solution became apparent when I got home. And it involved masking tape.
See many of you for the scratch tomorrow.
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
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.
|
|
I start researching Isadora and other object oriented programming
|
|
My brain hurts, so I start researching artists
|
|
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!)
|
|
I think "hm, Mark Conigilio, that sounds familiar."
|
|
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.
|
|
I start researching Isadora and other object oriented programming
|
|
My brain hurts, so I start researching artists
|
|
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!)
|
|
I think "hm, Mark Conigilio, that sounds familiar."
|
|
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.
Thursday, 24 January 2008
It's all Geek to me!
I'm researching tools that should help me realize my vision of a live melee comprised of body-based sounds and images (keep those fart jokes to yourself!)
Although there has been discussion previously, today is serious Day One on that journey. So much so that I'm unable to communicate what I've learned so far.
I will post links:
Object oriented programming software:
Isadora - http://www.troikatronix.com/isadora.html
Max/MSP - http://www.cycling74.com/products/maxmsp
PureData - http://puredata.info/
Microcontroller hubs, boards, something like that... (laugh now, but in a month I'll be looking at you as if you're a luddite because you don't know what I'm talking about):
Arduino - http://arduino.cc/
Eroktronix - http://www.eroktronix.com/
Here's my favorite quote of the day:
So if you yearn for an electromagnetic catapult that flings jelly at the audience every time you rattle your tambourine, or a USB incense burner which radiates progressively stronger smells as the temperature in the church hall rises, Pure Data can help you achieve this!
****YES!****
I just wrote, re-wrote, and deleted a paragraph of panicky apprehension about going down this route. I realize that I need to stave off the panic until I really invest the time to at least try to learn some of this because I can see that proficiency in this type of programming will lead to lots of interesting possibilities moving forward.
Next steps:
- try these things out
- understand enough to be able to ask the right questions to get the help from others that I need.
Monday, 14 January 2008
Research Proposal - January 2008
Activating the Body of a Tech Performer
Embodiment theory is used across the performance spectrum to develop performance personae and devise content. Applied to performers whose work involves the use of technology (e.g. live camera, VJ, electronic sound artists,) some of these ideas could be a starting point to develop active “tech performers” as opposed to the more traditional, passive “tech operators.” The first embodiment concept of interest is that the individual’s mind and body are inseparable since they are both part of a single entity. Ruth Zaporah’s Action Theater and Guillermo Gomez-Peña’s Pocha Nostra are two techniques that draw on this notion to develop a performer’s “presence” outside the traditional notions of representational theatre. The second concept is that the individual is part of a larger system. This “larger system” includes other performers, audience, performance space, and community, as described in accounts of the Happenings during the 1960s and 1970s and advocated by artists such as Richard Schechner (Govan, 2007.)
Guillermo Gomez-Peña has a pragmatic description of the distinction between perfomance art and traditional acting in his essay "In Defense of Performance, XXII Time and Space” (Gomez-Peña, 2005.) Performers must develop a sense of “presence” as opposed to “representation”; “being here” in the space as opposed to “acting” (ibid, p.39.) In performance art, the audience is up next to you, interacting with you. "Every detail and every small gesture makes a statement." (ibid, p.126.) Gomez-Peña’s strategy for developing a performance “persona” is deeply rooted in embodiment theory. The development of a persona draws on a performer’s experience and personal contradictions and is then “activated” through the exploration of actions that "contain the flesh and bones" of the emerging persona (ibid, p.127) and begins to communicate the hallmarks of the performance persona. Finally, the body is transformed into “performance mode” starting with transforming the face and expression, down through to the feet until the persona inhabits every pore of the performer.
Ruth Zaporah’s Action Theater offers performance strategies such as “the improvisation of presence” (1995) and “embodied content” (2007) which stem from her background as a dancer and an improvisor. To gain full performance presence, the body is tuned through a series of exercises that break down the performer’s actions to the most elemental states*. An accutely detailed awareness of and fascination with both physical and psychic states at all times is key to developing a performance because all content will arise from this presence. As Zaporah puts it, these “sensory details are the signs and arrows that point in the direction of your next move.” (Zaporah, 1995. p.109) Through this process, an active performer emerges ready to trust that every experience that arises from the body will create a stimulating performance.
Gomez-Peña and Zaporah both believe that all performances start in the body** and also stress the importance of positioning the individual performer in the larger system to draw content from and feedback into. They join the wider chorus of artists who believe that involving the larger system in performance is inevitable because performers simply are part of a wider context (Zaporah, 1995.) A notable voice in this chorus is Richard Schechner who comments that “in performance art the ‘distance’ between the really real (socially, personally, with the audience, with the performers) is much less than in drama theater...” (Gomez-Peña, 2005, p.38) Contemplating this distance can provide performers with rich ground to develop performances from and also affirms the need for acute, detailed awareness of the performer’s body that both Zaporah and Gomez-Peña advocate for.
I plan to use the aspects of embodiment discussed in this proposal as a lens through which to reconcile a couple of issues that interest me as I strive to become an active video-based “tech performer.” The first is to consider my physical presence in the performance, the relationship between my body, the camera and other performers, and ultimately what this communicates to the audience. This challenge arose in both Shahar Dor’s Improvideo and Kelli Dipple’s Intimacy and Recorded Presence workshops that I participated in this fall. The second issue is a personal challenge to return to a basic, no-frills definition of technology that I can apply to my video work–technology as a tool to allow the body to do something it cannot do on its own. Referencing work of body-based performers such as Gomez-Peña and Zaporah will continue to be useful as I explore these issues in my practice. I need to locate performers who I believe have successfully achieved the goal of active “tech performer” as a next step in my research.
I also see a need to elaborate on the relationship between individual and technology in my research. In his foreword to Performa: New Visual Art Performance, Hal Foster claims that the performance art of the 1960s and 1970s was a reaction to the increased mediation of art. He goes on to state that 30 years on, performance’s relationship to media has now been reconciled (Goldberg, 2007.) However, after attending the conference Intimacy across visceral and digital performance (2007), it is clear that there are still a large number of performers and scholars who have not reconciled or actively reject technological mediation of live performance. At the conference, embodiment theory was used on both sides to simultaneously argue that the presence of technology dilutes the impact of the live act and that it heightens emotional communication (e.g. camera close-ups) and can be an extension of Self (e.g. online avatars (Sermon, 2007.)) There is an opportunity for me to enter into this debate through my proposed research. In keeping with embodiment theory, I see possibilities of the “individual and technology” relationship working on many different levels. At the moment, I consider this relationship as part of the exercise of the individual to integrate mind and body into a moment of presence during the performance. Technology might also be used as a catalyst to bridge the explorations of the individual performer to the different levels of the larger system.
Footnotes:
* This description is based on my personal experience of the technique as a participant in a 10-week workshop conducted by Action Theater practioner Kate Hilder during the fall of 2007 in London.
** My system of thought tends to be both emotionally and corporeally based. In fact, the performance always begins in my skin and muscles, projects itself onto the social sphere, and returns via my psyche, back to my body and into my bloodstream, only to be refracted back into the social world via documentation. Whatever thoughts I can't embody, I tend to distrust. Whatever ideas I can't feel way deep inside, I rend to disregard. (Gomez-Peña, 2005, pp.30-31)
... [we] tend to act with our attention ... in the function, intention, or language of an action. We deny the body its role as collaborator....In the perfect moment ... there is only congruent action–the body, the expression of the face and eyes, the state of mind, the voice, and narrative are all inseparable, spontaneously arising moment by moment from the same source of imaginative awareness. (Zaporah, 2007. p.12)
Embodiment theory is used across the performance spectrum to develop performance personae and devise content. Applied to performers whose work involves the use of technology (e.g. live camera, VJ, electronic sound artists,) some of these ideas could be a starting point to develop active “tech performers” as opposed to the more traditional, passive “tech operators.” The first embodiment concept of interest is that the individual’s mind and body are inseparable since they are both part of a single entity. Ruth Zaporah’s Action Theater and Guillermo Gomez-Peña’s Pocha Nostra are two techniques that draw on this notion to develop a performer’s “presence” outside the traditional notions of representational theatre. The second concept is that the individual is part of a larger system. This “larger system” includes other performers, audience, performance space, and community, as described in accounts of the Happenings during the 1960s and 1970s and advocated by artists such as Richard Schechner (Govan, 2007.)
Guillermo Gomez-Peña has a pragmatic description of the distinction between perfomance art and traditional acting in his essay "In Defense of Performance, XXII Time and Space” (Gomez-Peña, 2005.) Performers must develop a sense of “presence” as opposed to “representation”; “being here” in the space as opposed to “acting” (ibid, p.39.) In performance art, the audience is up next to you, interacting with you. "Every detail and every small gesture makes a statement." (ibid, p.126.) Gomez-Peña’s strategy for developing a performance “persona” is deeply rooted in embodiment theory. The development of a persona draws on a performer’s experience and personal contradictions and is then “activated” through the exploration of actions that "contain the flesh and bones" of the emerging persona (ibid, p.127) and begins to communicate the hallmarks of the performance persona. Finally, the body is transformed into “performance mode” starting with transforming the face and expression, down through to the feet until the persona inhabits every pore of the performer.
Ruth Zaporah’s Action Theater offers performance strategies such as “the improvisation of presence” (1995) and “embodied content” (2007) which stem from her background as a dancer and an improvisor. To gain full performance presence, the body is tuned through a series of exercises that break down the performer’s actions to the most elemental states*. An accutely detailed awareness of and fascination with both physical and psychic states at all times is key to developing a performance because all content will arise from this presence. As Zaporah puts it, these “sensory details are the signs and arrows that point in the direction of your next move.” (Zaporah, 1995. p.109) Through this process, an active performer emerges ready to trust that every experience that arises from the body will create a stimulating performance.
Gomez-Peña and Zaporah both believe that all performances start in the body** and also stress the importance of positioning the individual performer in the larger system to draw content from and feedback into. They join the wider chorus of artists who believe that involving the larger system in performance is inevitable because performers simply are part of a wider context (Zaporah, 1995.) A notable voice in this chorus is Richard Schechner who comments that “in performance art the ‘distance’ between the really real (socially, personally, with the audience, with the performers) is much less than in drama theater...” (Gomez-Peña, 2005, p.38) Contemplating this distance can provide performers with rich ground to develop performances from and also affirms the need for acute, detailed awareness of the performer’s body that both Zaporah and Gomez-Peña advocate for.
I plan to use the aspects of embodiment discussed in this proposal as a lens through which to reconcile a couple of issues that interest me as I strive to become an active video-based “tech performer.” The first is to consider my physical presence in the performance, the relationship between my body, the camera and other performers, and ultimately what this communicates to the audience. This challenge arose in both Shahar Dor’s Improvideo and Kelli Dipple’s Intimacy and Recorded Presence workshops that I participated in this fall. The second issue is a personal challenge to return to a basic, no-frills definition of technology that I can apply to my video work–technology as a tool to allow the body to do something it cannot do on its own. Referencing work of body-based performers such as Gomez-Peña and Zaporah will continue to be useful as I explore these issues in my practice. I need to locate performers who I believe have successfully achieved the goal of active “tech performer” as a next step in my research.
I also see a need to elaborate on the relationship between individual and technology in my research. In his foreword to Performa: New Visual Art Performance, Hal Foster claims that the performance art of the 1960s and 1970s was a reaction to the increased mediation of art. He goes on to state that 30 years on, performance’s relationship to media has now been reconciled (Goldberg, 2007.) However, after attending the conference Intimacy across visceral and digital performance (2007), it is clear that there are still a large number of performers and scholars who have not reconciled or actively reject technological mediation of live performance. At the conference, embodiment theory was used on both sides to simultaneously argue that the presence of technology dilutes the impact of the live act and that it heightens emotional communication (e.g. camera close-ups) and can be an extension of Self (e.g. online avatars (Sermon, 2007.)) There is an opportunity for me to enter into this debate through my proposed research. In keeping with embodiment theory, I see possibilities of the “individual and technology” relationship working on many different levels. At the moment, I consider this relationship as part of the exercise of the individual to integrate mind and body into a moment of presence during the performance. Technology might also be used as a catalyst to bridge the explorations of the individual performer to the different levels of the larger system.
Footnotes:
* This description is based on my personal experience of the technique as a participant in a 10-week workshop conducted by Action Theater practioner Kate Hilder during the fall of 2007 in London.
** My system of thought tends to be both emotionally and corporeally based. In fact, the performance always begins in my skin and muscles, projects itself onto the social sphere, and returns via my psyche, back to my body and into my bloodstream, only to be refracted back into the social world via documentation. Whatever thoughts I can't embody, I tend to distrust. Whatever ideas I can't feel way deep inside, I rend to disregard. (Gomez-Peña, 2005, pp.30-31)
... [we] tend to act with our attention ... in the function, intention, or language of an action. We deny the body its role as collaborator....In the perfect moment ... there is only congruent action–the body, the expression of the face and eyes, the state of mind, the voice, and narrative are all inseparable, spontaneously arising moment by moment from the same source of imaginative awareness. (Zaporah, 2007. p.12)
Monday, 12 November 2007
Optofonica
Bookmarking for further research, and posting to blog because these artists are working in a similar space to many of us VLPers.
http://www.optofonica.com/artists/index.htm
**************************
I'm feeling increasingly repelled by the stark, bright white, minimalist, futuristic aesthetic that seems to be linked to anything cutting edge in design or art that has to do with technology. In this case, seems like a weird aesthetic when you're talking about immersive, multi-sensory environments which are presumably experimenting with creating more organic technology-based experiences.
http://www.optofonica.com/artists/index.htm
**************************
I'm feeling increasingly repelled by the stark, bright white, minimalist, futuristic aesthetic that seems to be linked to anything cutting edge in design or art that has to do with technology. In this case, seems like a weird aesthetic when you're talking about immersive, multi-sensory environments which are presumably experimenting with creating more organic technology-based experiences.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
