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.

idea

This is the idea about live animation that I worked/spoke about with specially Filip and Ambra. Down below is our idea filtered through my brain, and as we spoke with Boris... it's still totally open, so see it as inspiration if you wanna contribute.

the live animation of a contemporary body

Concept:

Through both real and videoprojected changes we transform two people between each other, age, looks and gender. With a surreal language punch at beauty industry, look behind facial transformations as smiles, yawnings and surgery. Wishing to awake thoughts and also create a bit of disgust.

Estetchics;
Raw, naked, dark, dirty, abused, infected, (secret plastic surgery clinic?).
Movements inspired by clay animated movies.

Colors:
Brown, blood, sepia

visual set up:

two people (A&B), one on each side of a rectangular room (prefearably man and woman...)

one camera catching person A who with a projector is projected on person B on the other side of the room, a second set up going the other way around.

video mixer chosing who is projected upon.

Additional projecting material (prerecorded)

set up audio:

prerecorded voice fragments of different people, sometimes synced with prerecorded video material.

loudspeaker by each person in the space

maybe small microphones for live speach (person A's voice through B's speaker...)


CRUCIAL:

Image fitting and live lip sync!


Audience:
Stands on the long side of the room, able to see actions in both directions.
the focus shifts from right to left, sometimes left person is projected on the right and at other times right person on the left. Sometimes prerecorded material (possible on both?)


TOOLS:
"minimal" live physical movements from 2 dancers (ex. inspired by Butho)
clay animations (transforming body parts, ex perfect boobs deforming, both live and on video)
changing layers of clothes
layers of nylon stockings
bodypaint (maybe skin colored light pink)
mirrors

+prerecorded visual material consisting of actions and transformation on high speed, different people of different ages probably shot in the same environment(?) as performing. (Eating, talking, being)

+prerecorded voices. Private sounds laughters, farts, humming and also maybe jibberjabber "surgery statements" ex: "...to create the look that you deserve we need to dig into the core of your knee capsule and remodulate the essence of your smooth muscle device"

maybe body double in clay to be able to walk out on your own person (nice ending... like leaving your body... could be nice with a movement breakout in silence as an answer to the audiovisual abuse...)