The following message was posted to: dance-tech Hallo dance-tech group: Palindrome produced it first workshop in January -- understand, we have done DOZENS of workshops, but until now, they were always under the auspices of an outside institute or company. so this was actually _Palindrome's_ first workshop! though not large -- 11 participants -- they came from far and wide: 6 countries were represented. The special nature of the event was reflected in the high level of expertise and engagement in those attending. none of the projects were trivial; all contributed new perspectives on the uses of interactive systems in performance and elsewhere. The workshop had 4 basic principles: 1. everyone (dancer and not) begins the day with dance class (we offered expert-level, as well as beginner-level classes) 2. individual project work forms the core of the workshop experience 3. hands-on training in useful-to-dancers software systems (including eyecon) 4. lectures every evening on technical themes applicable to work with human motion and dance (sensor technology, video systems, digital interfaces, etc.) RESULTS Pictures and video clips are on the way... Reviews and Comments: "Nicola Hepp was the first to show her work. it combined a live dance, live video, and recorded video controlled by the dancer's movements (using eyecon). the piece played with the distinction between live and virtual (recorded) image; it was not always clear if we were seeing a recording or a live feed. since the live camera's perspective was turned 90 degrees from the viewer, and that of the screen was turned 90 degrees in the other axis, the combination of perspectives additionally made an interesting study in the use of space in relation to the human body in motion." -RW "Robynne M. Gravenhorst 's installation-performance work was one of our favorites. while naturally uncompleted (in her case, from concept to realization in 2 days), it was actually quite successful on a number of levels. in the darkened room, a woman's body is discovered lying on a raised stretcher covered with a white sheet under a beam of light. behind her is screen projecting the image of her unmoving face. whenever she closes her eyes, even for an instant, the screen switches to a film of her moving body parts, in warm colors, and occasionally a pair of advancing headlights. when you touch the electrodes attached to her body, sound samples are triggered. a man's voice asking the "patient" questions, and, "blink once for yes, twice for no". later as she moves her upper body slightly this too controls sound samples (through the electricity released during muscle contraction). the piece was both simple enough to follow and yet complicated enough in its layers of structure and content to engender thoughts on its subject matter." -RW "As a research student in architecture I was interested in the use of motion tracking technologies in the design process and their potential to capture movement and feed their output directly to design software. At the workshop I did a little experiment, linking Eyecon with 3Dstudio(modeling software) thus translating the bending of a performer into rotation of a plane that followed the performer's velocity. I was really satisfied because there seemed to be a possibility to link more EyeCon's parameters with different design parameters and commands in 3Dstudio. I now want to continue this investigation on my research project in London and create a design methodology for architecture that recognizes movement and modifies architectural design accordingly. Dance technologies, like Eyecon, do not only have to be used for audio or video signal processing but they can apparently be used to feed other software applications and thus be useful for other practitioners like designers." -SY "I also enjoyed the atmosphere in the group. I think we all felt free these days. Reason's for this could be; the people (!), the technology (which is fun, I come back to this), starting the day with body-work, having a lot of space around, the open set-up of the workshop. - Highlight for me was the 'eye-con jam-session'... Stephen and George were designing funny soundscapes while everybody ran around like children, making noise. We have to grow up, study, become artists and work with software, in order to become children again. I'm quite serious about this, in the evolution technology is often used to 'return'. - So eye-con is fun to experience as a moving body. This brings me to what has become the most important issue for me in the workshop. How to use possible eye-con experiences in art/dance?. (I will be talking about eye-con mainly, personally I'm not attracted to getting wired.) For me the first thing that comes to mind is to use eye-con for installations. People will enjoy to explore a space that reacts on them, and as an artist it gives you the chance to move (the bodies but also the minds of) people. - Final remark I want to make has to do with interactivity. When is something interactive? When you reach with you're hand and you hear a sound you have designed yourself, this is not interactive, you are using eye-con as a fancy remote-control. 'Old-fashioned' music-dance improvisation is far more interactive. So we have to think of concept for designing reactions that are open, meaningful, and lead to new experiences. There's still a lot of work to look forward to..." -BV "Peter Purg's "PhD defense" was as nutty as it was compelling. What begins as a formal lecture, degenerates, in stages, into performance art -- an interesting interplay of the cerebral and the physical. His lecture, with the title "Körper in interaktiven eletronischen Raeumen", begins at a certain point to repeat certain words. Degradation stage two: these words become triggered in randomly determined sequence from 12 touchlines circling his position (as comments on the sci-art discourse: KOERPER, RAUM, INTERAKTIVITAET, SCHNITTSTELLE + the verbs IST WIRD SEI WAR, each with two different intonations: interrogative and indicative). Stage three is the "emerging choreography (under the chaotic discursive pressure)". This flips -- stage four -- into triggering mouth-percussion sounds (eight dynamic fields surround him this time). Finally, stage five, he triggers video sequences of his own "e-dance" (a copoeira-taiqi-studio-workout), which, i have to say, was _wild_. I am sure Peter could say a good deal more about this draft work (which in the end really will be his PhD defense!), but what impressed me was the sliding transition between what we normally think of quite opposite formats of expression; cognitive/academic and intuitive/artistic." -RW "In his well-conceived study Vreeswijk applied EyeCon's flexibility of code, thus reaping the benefits of its perhaps unparalleled conceptual modularity. By moving in front of a screen hung over a stage the user should, by way of exploration, wake up a deceased dancing teacher and bring him back to life on-screen as a shadowy silhouette image. The teachers offers you a simple phrase; if one follows the teacher's example, moving roughly as they do, one is rewarded by having the image of the teacher become clearer, more real. Fine tuning is required in perception as well as movement to strike an interactive balance between inducing and becoming a dynamic mirror image -between shadowing and being shadowed. Through the mystic blend of mixed spatiality and mixed temporality such life-as-dancing could offer an experience of truly hybridized reality, exploring between self and other, regardless of the medium." -PP Stephen Riolo's piece used the muscle electrode system to control an emersive color environment, as well as music: "My piece was about blue and red all that can be drived from those colours; heat/cold, passion/placidity, hell/heaven. That's it, simple concept manifested though electrodes, eyecon, and the help of George and Frieder. The choreography was made to martch the mood of the color and the projection was done to make my physical appearence match the colours vibe." SR "As a dance student with limited technical knowledge I was awe struck by the technology being unraveled before me. However the friendly relaxed atmosphere created by the members of Palindrome, as well as the other members of the group, made everything a lot less daunting! I found the possibilities of technology such as eye-con absolutely mind-blowing, and it was fantastic to see everyone's projects developing. After four days I can say I'm no expert but my confidence with using technology within installation and dance work has definitely improved, not only that but I had a fantastic time!" -RL Thanks again for your contributions! With friendly regards, The Palindrome Team Members of Palindrome Workshop 1-2003 PS We were asked: will it be continued? YES! We have plans to do it twice a year: August and January. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Robert Wechsler Artistic Director Palindrome Inter.media Performance Group Johannisstr. 42 90419 Nürnberg Germany fon: +49 (911) 397472 fax: +49 (911) 3778311 http://www.palindrome.de ---------------------------------------- The Dance-Tech mailing list has recently moved to a new address. To post a message, send email to dance-tech@dancetechnology.org. 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