Tapet

Development & reseach into digital dance performance

Overview

The interactive performance space contains of a 3x3 m square projected canvas opposite a wall covered with a landscape mural. The projected image is the dancer keyed onto a video image of the empty audience space. As the audience interacts with the artwork, the technical layer articulates pre-recorded videos of dance movements and live audience recordings into a narrative performance.

Aims

• What are the main challenges/advances of the multidisciplinary collaboration between the choreographer, scenographer, multimedia designer, programmer and technical support?
• How will the audience experience the performance when the role of the audience changes from passive consumer of content to interactive trigger of content and finally into a visual and recorded part of the content?
• What are the intersecting concepts whcih assist in understand this performance and the production processes behind it?

Theories

A range of theories are brought to bear in this project. They include:

• meditated performance (live/meditated, immediacy/hypermediacy)
• embodied interaction
• theory based creative processes and digital scenography
• performativity
• deconstructed audience experience
• multidisciplinary production process
• synthetic-analytic research.

Methods

Synthetic-analytic research into expressive communication is central to this project. This approach applied to digital media enables the developemnent and study of close and dynamic relations between the ways 'new' media are produced and analysed. The use of experimental and expressive content in this synthetic analytic context provides a freedom to create material that challenges our uses and understandings of communicative and analytical tools in tems of performativity.

Analysis

Empirical data in Tapet (video/photo/printed documents from the production process, video from installation/audience situations) is analysed using in terms of creative and expressive discourse perfomrance. This supplemented by practical experience and reflection from the project in terms of creating and adapting digital scenography.

Outcomes

Outcomes for the Tapet project include:

• enhanced competence and knowledge of multidisciplinary collaborative processes
• experience and knowledge of analytical approach to new digital expressions
• explored and enhanced technical knowledge about digital media, and MPEG4-technology in particular
• the creation of an art piece that expands the experience of a performance and notion of time/space into a virtual one, thereby confronting and extending the role of the audience/user in an interactive installation.

Publications & presentations

Morrison, A. ‘Unsettling the setting? Reflections on digital scenography’. Inivited presentation at Research Seminar on Digital Scenography. Aarhus University 24 January 2005.

Morrison, A. & Skjulstad, S. 2004. ‘Towards embodied interaction’. Designing Design Seminar Series. Electronic arts: Dance and Technology. InterMedia, University of Oslo. 7 December.

Morrison, A. Skjulstad; S. & Smørdal, O. 2004 ‘Choreographing augmented space’. Paper presented at Future Ground Conference 2004, Melbourne Australia, 17-21 November (to appear in refereed proceedings).

Sem, I. 2003. Mediert protagonist i en live performance. Master's Term Paper, Dept. of Media & Communication, University of Olso. The Extended Project.

Sem, I. 2004. 'Making and analysing multimediated dance'. Designing Design Seminar Series. Electronic arts: Dance and Technology. InterMedia, University of Oslo. 7 December.