[-empyre-] forward from Hellen Sky, Company in Space

[Christina McPhee <christinamcphee@yahoo.com>]

Hellen Sky & John Mc Cormick creative directors  

Hellen Director, choreographer - collaborator ? image
maker ? administrator producer performer conceiver and
all the things we have to be.  

John Director - technology interface designer,
choreographer, systems designer motion capture vision
mixer and all the things we have to be.  
 
 
 

Hellen - the body in virtual space questions that
remain dear to me??? 

Where is my body , what is my body in borderless
geographies of soft space, while we still walk on this
earth. ?  

An audience member in the post show Q&A session
following the performance we created for Green Mill
Dance Festival Melbourne - Navigators - mapping the
Dream 1995  


Once asked me where was your body. Hmmm ? seems it
keeps on shifting.  
 


Navigators used a combination of pre recorded footage
of dancers, filmed underwater suspended in liquid
spaces, 2D line animations by lisa Roberts and 3D
grahics by marshall white, and a camera based
interactive system by john allowing dancers to trigger
sounds and animations, a range of fixed camera point
of views to performer. and more  


5 projectors relayed these images to a combination of
rigged screens that unfurled, hinged and swung to
devide and alter space, like sail cloths, and
sometimes just to the portal on the back wall
cyclorama. 

The moment they were referring to was a point where I
was falling through space, actually I was rolling on
the floor. An overhead camera observed slippery floor
sequences, my very released and supple body ( it was
some time ago) could roll invert and tumble below the
eye of the camera, a black and white vortex, projected
to the back wall and in my mind, and on the back wall,
the floor was no longer there, I was literally falling
through space. Like alice down the hole,  

This relationship between body space, gravity , time,
lag time, memory, experience, multitasking
imagination, multi sensory intelligent body, and its
representation and dialogues between media, the
physical and virtual worlds as they become networked
over grids, of grids continue to extend me ?.. 
 

So Dear Empyre some thoughts about the beginning and
new ideas of networked performances, as our live
performance has shifted from the terrain and in
between the spaces of single physical venue, live
audience and the media of dance, image, camera, sound,
computers software, interfaces and triggering devices,
midi, max, isdn telecommunication, motion capture, the
minds and imaginations of dancers, performers,
computer programmers, composers, architects,engineers
and into the possibilities of shared 3DVR worlds while
we still walk on earth, as our fingers hit the
connected keys.  


Technology and transformation - live performer
representation - experiencing space - from camera
based systems - pixels and 2D animations to - body as
code - real time data motion capture ? avatars in
shared 3DVR virtual proseciums, you don?t have to see
an avatar you can hear them, and soon you might feel
them.  

Replay, backtrack ? single site  

Company in space first began working with interactive
elements that allowed sounds and images to be
augmented into the physical, visual and aural spaces
of their performances. At first in single physical
site, developing more complex concepts of
choreography. The moving body no longer just creating
movement vocabularies but orchestrating images and
sounds, initially through triggering devices.  

More complex spaces using camera based systems and
working with composer Garth Paine and the Very Nervous
System, allowed the sound scores to become responsive
to the live choreography, An expansive sensorial space
expanding the perceptions of the performer, a small
gesture no longer just a a visual gesture but a
conversation , a dialogue with score, freely rhythmic,
movement not tied to the timing of score but part of a
more total concept of choreography sound, image,
movement, architecture , location. - the body sensing
space.  
 

Live camera performers are introduced to this dance,
The dance between the dancer and the camera. They re
invision the performer in real time, sending the
camera feed to computer systems, where it is altered
through various effects and transparency levels,
delays and pixel alteration. Vision mixed, in realtime
and reprojected juxtaposing the live performance to
screen s, or multiple screen designed responsively or
located dynamically within the architecture of the
theatre. Other cameras connected to VNS observed the
pixel density of space, and space interrupted, zones
were mapped by garth and with midi and max software
interface became sound intelligent to his electro
acoustic scores, and algorithmic sound gesture motiffs
- an interplay between body motion and sculpting of
sounds in space. 
 

Space is extended the camera feed and screen becoming
a conduit between performers, audiences located in
different geographies and cultures on either side of
the world.  
 

Replay back track duel site

Live camera point of views to separated performers at
the remote ends where choreographed to achieve a
representation of co in habitation of the same virtual
space, projected to either end of the performance
link, again with real time vision mixing including
other layers of 2d animations.  

Choreographies of all media were first understood
through shared physical space rehearsals. Duets,
quartettes choreographed with dancers sharing another
bodies weight, touch, timing the bodies multi sensing
site , sound, touch, body memory rhythm, gravity,
weight, simultaneously being understood as they are
framed ? re framed by the choreographed camera, and
responsively to the toaster effects, which rendered
them more abstractly than a straight camera feed. And
performing to an audience both here and there. The
performer engages with the remote audience via the
camera and a perceptual shift of attention occurs., to
visible and invisible audience, real and virtual
partners in the physical architecture of the theatre
and the virtual architectures of the 2D and 3D
environments into which they merge.  
 

Meanwhile this is also streamed to remote audiences on
line, they can watch and depending on the speed of
their connection and frame rate this pixilated mix is
viewed privately some time, lag time after it has
really happened. - IN carnate - duel site performance
between Hong Kong Arts Centre and Melbourne -
Dancehouse 2001 a collaboration across time and
cultures. 
 

In 2001 CO 3 A real time motion capture. Performance
networked to another in Florida USA. 


A performer wearing metalilic exoskeleton computer,
gyroscope, and processor is tethered to the computer
via an very long cable, as she traverses the physical
architectures of the old Capitol theatre, her virtual
others - avatars transform from more human to absract
forms, the virtual worlds projected around her
transpose locations. At time the florida performer/
avatar appears as flames beneath her virtual feet, or
a tornado in the shared world ?  

In this networked environment the combined body data,
generated in real time, from the augmented exoskeleton
technology body symbiosis, merging with the florida
body data ( polhemus) is mixing to change the outcomes
of the shared 3D world 


Fast Track 

So where is my body now in the soft geographies of the
shared networking space where I exist as code ready
for transfusions with other codes, and who else might
already have it.?? 
 
 

Sorry have to go now didn?t really get to my points
but there are probably a few to pick up on in this
weave. 

 


=====
<http://www.naxsmash.net>

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