State three
Date
2005-10-15
Authors
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
ISSN
DOI
Volume Title
Publisher
Type
Other
Peer reviewed
Abstract
Description
This project investigated the possibilities for an interactive digital dance installation to convey an impression of the viscerality of improvised dance through the projection of prerecorded movement material. The accompanying DVD shows a short extract of the installation, which took place over two hours. Individual audience members were invited to manipulate visual material by tracking the movements of their hands via a software interface (Isadora). The images were projected onto an 8ft high curving, translucent screen that partially enclosed the viewer.
State Three aimed to explore the synergies between recent discussions about creativity in digital media, and methodologies for framing and capturing movement in dance improvisation. The piece set out to discover a creative methodology for working with technology not as other artists have appeared to approach it as a box of tricks but as something that is also an integral part of the creative process. By using the software interface to create complex over-layerings of fragmented movement material that are in some way affected by the audience member, it explores how the projected image might challenge normative modes of presentation and in turn how this might be experienced. By inviting one audience member at a time to negotiate the interface, notions of embodied experience (Grosz & Merleau-Ponty), placement and perspective (Gordon & Viola, artists dealing with audience perspective in terms of space and place), and immersion (Rubidge) were explored in order to provide an opportunity to engage with pre-recorded images in an unpredictable way. Audience feedback suggests that the experience was more intriguing because they realized that their interface was more than just a mechanisitic one. Some noted that the experience of manipulating the images was translated for them as physical motion and they found themselves dealing with how they moved themselves physically in relation to the projected image.
Keywords
RAE 2008, UoA 65 Drama, Dance and Performing Arts