Klaus Obermaier/Chris Haring

...as I told a little bit about ideas and what we had tried, my boyfriend mentioned a solo experimenting with both similar thoughts (to things I wrote before) and also exploring video projections on the body.

D.A.V.E. is based on an idea by the media artist and composer Klaus Obermaier,
and was developed in collaboration with the choreographer and dancer Chris Haring.

I have seen another piece by the same austrian choreographer, Chris Haring/Liquidloft where he worked with miming voices in a very creative way, so he's definitely someone to check out as inspiration for many things. It's interesting this thing that things somehow always been done... but he didn't use clay I think;-)

What’s novel about D.A.V.E. is the concentration of the projections on the body in motion while
avoiding conventional spatial and screen projections. You don’t think about the video anymore;
it just belongs to the body. It’s a part of the body, or rather the performer is part of the video.
The boundaries grow indistinct and are deactivated.
Video projection, physical presence and acoustic environment thus blend into a symbiosis and create
their own new reality: D.A.V.E. – digital amplified video engine.

D.A.V.E. switches effortlessly between young and old, male and female; he distorts his body, his limbs.
His anus recites biblical passages both profound and ironic with the voice of a child;
the body dissolves into streaming worlds of digital images.
D.A.V.E. deals with the manipulation and reformulation of the human body by means of biotech,
genetic engineering and computer technology.
D.A.V.E. plays with real and virtual situations and the dissolution of the boundary between these
two states, morphs between nightmare ,redemption and transformation, culminating in the
suspension of physicality.

Review and Outlook...

i would like to post some references of own and related work (like done already in during the last workshop) for documentation reasons but also to point out my interests and where it might lead to... i hope i can keep myself a bit clear in thoughts but i would like to put on some very different refelctions and ideas and hope of plenty of feedback from you...

an interesting issue and discussion during the "sound workshop" was related to space and the characteristics of it - f.e. when Boris put on different frequencies and therefore brought objects in the room to "live" / vibrate or while walking around the space getting different "impressions" of the same sound - thus sound instantly "interacts" with a human body when he changes position in space - this very basic sort of interaction (away from any digital technics) - the human/space relation and the possibility of exploring is something i would like to work around...

transferring this idea to seeing in place of hearing could suggest to deal with space and thatfore with 3 dimensions in place of a two dimensional screen - this was always a very frustating experience during some vj-gigs in the past as one gets captured by a frame, a flat surface placed in space, which might be bearable for dealing with narration but less for creating a visual athmosphere in a space, a sort of sublayer of the physical environment (sometimes i got the feeling that a "disco ball" has more effect as simple as it is in comparison to a small screen somewhere in the upper left corner of a stage)...

As Projections are nothing more than thrown light, a "beamer" or the light that comes out of it also uses air as medium (like sound does) to be transported from A to B - but speaking about a screen, B mostly absorbs all information on a framed surface. The advantage of thrown light is that it doesnt neccessarily need a screen - the digital layer (image/video) can be merged with any physical object... The result thatfore depends not only on the qualities of the virtual part (as screens are optimized to show the best possible equivalent of what was created for a computer screen mostly) but also on physical qualities which might (be used to) influence the digital part - roughness, smoothness, glossiness, dullness, etc. can become parameters of sound and image... some of this ideas where tried to be realized in a very basic way in my last installation which dealed with a transformed surface in a reflective material surrounded by materials with other qualities that where related to sound and image...


documentation video scr_mod


references:
visomat
pablo valbuena
man with mirror (very impressive example of dealing with reflection, virtual and physical space...)

outlook: object (space) - image (projection) - sound (acoustics)
a further development of the "augmented objects"/"transformed screen" mentioned before could place the "object" (screen) in a central position of a space affecting its environment through f.e reflection,... the basic idea lays still in affecting a space in a visible way some further thoughts led to the idea to organize reflection to its space (surrounding walls, ceiling, floor) which would generate the form of the "projection object" - i am not sure about this as i saw the object until now more as something autonomous - like a living structure affecting different spaces in different ways... like a part of a city cut out of it`s context and viewed from above with it`s informal almost random composition of roofs affected by sunlight...



the way of controlling the digital part (projection) could be a symbioses of automatization, interaction with the observer and dictation by a performer (i guess this part might be worked out during trials) - i would like to call on this place arnold and his motion capture installation using infra red cam and light - would it be possible to make some trials with it during the next workshop or even before (maybe you can post some experiences you made with your system - did you use a sort of wide angle lense for the cam? where can you get those things and in which price category do they lay (budget wise)...

the previous thoughts should not be seen as definite proposal but more as subject of discussion and finding nodes of collaboration - i would appreciate to get some feedback from you guys - maybe also from bram (as you saw the installation at eetavontuur), or people who are/were guiding the workshops (and are still following here on the blog ;) )...

Live Stage: GLOW (nyc)

Chunky Move: Glow :: February 7-9, 2008; 7:30 pm and 9:30 pm :: February 10, 2 pm and 3:30 pm :: The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, NYC :: Co-Presented with The Joyce Theater.

Glow is an illuminating choreographic essay by Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek and interactive software creator Frieder Weiss. Beneath the glow of a sophisticated video tracking system, a lone organic being mutates in and out of human form into unfamiliar, sensual and grotesque creature states.

Utilising the latest in interactive video technologies a digital landscape is generated in real time in response to the dancer's movement. The body's gestures are extended by and in turn manipulate the video world that surrounds it, rendering no two performances exactly the same.

In Glow, light and moving graphics are not pre-rendered video playback but rather images constantly generated by various algorithms responding to movement. In most conventional works employing projection lighting, the dancer's position and timing have to be completely fixed to the space and timeline of the video playback. Their role is reduced to the difficult chore of making every performance an exact facsimile of the original. In Glow, the machine sees the performer and responds to their actions, unlocking them from a relationship of restriction and tedium.

contradiction projections/body

Hey,

I just wrote a lot of things about the contraction in combining the medium 'body' and the medium 'projection'. I deleted it (because it was to confusing) and decided to just ask this difficult question: Why combining projections with bodies and what will happen when you do that in a club? (Not that I want to give doubts about the project, I just think that this is a very interesting debate and will give practical guides to Lotta, Ambra and Filip and hopefully to all of ous.)

PS: Maybe some of the labels with this message could be a base to build answers on this question.