Tuesday 2 February 2010

To do list

On Sunday I suggested we need to prioritise our collective effort to make the best use of time we have. I think a good starting point would be to collect our various ideas - especially the ideas that require cooperative work - into a list and then try to figure out some priorities. Michele suggested I should get the ball rolling so here goes (in no particular order):
- Sensors: getting the system set up receiving data from dancers and sharing data between the computers. which will enable us to work on:
- Sensors: dancer's interacting with 3D world & music - games and dramaturgy.
- Dancers should spend time performing with Paul's images to develop interesting connections between the screen images and the stage performance.
- Exploring the sounds from Carolin's small speakers in relation to her performance (vocal & theatrical)
- Developing dancer's sonic performance. Especially when more then one dancer is performing the relationship between the different sounds (acoustic & electronic), gestures, images.
- Developing a megaphone (of sorts) for Anne-Laure to distort her vocal performance.
- Can we Use small speakers to animate objects (e.g. if we hang speakers like leaves from a tree will they rattle a little when we send sounds into them?)
- Finding an effective way to utilise the wireless speaker, and then integrate it into the performance if we can.

Some of these might need to be broken up into smaller tasks as we develop our wish list.

7 comments:

Paul said...

his all looks very positive in that it explores the technology in an innovative
way.

There needs to be work done on the specific interaction between performer and image performer and sound.

best as ever
Paul

Eng Tat said...

If you need help with setting up the sensors with the laptops, we could arrange for a time, I can come online and setup the system together with you, mixed reality collaboration :)

I have some thoughts about Oded and Paul's comments.

About Oded's point about using sound to animate object, I think thats very interesting and would elaborate on the relationships between sound and other elements, like objects/visual. In my previous production, I used sound to generate laser visual patterns on the wall. Speaker was inside the pvc tube, which is covered by a membrane (balloon in this case). A color laser is projected on the mirror on the center of the membrane. Based on the frequency, you can see complex Lassajous figures traced onto the wall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_curve

I can't agree more with Paul that we need more work to be done on the interactions between performer, visual and sound. Technology should be used creatively to support/create new interactions, and when it truly works, it should disappear.

Rgds,
Eng Tat

Unknown said...

Oded, I appreciate so much the to-do list with clear focus and productivity.

I was finding a little hard to focus on the project last Sunday. There are some other things I have been working on since we left Japan, and I imagine other people would be same. The to-do list helps me a lot to get a grip on things I can actually do rather than talking and discussing, and I think we should really get our teeth into the tasks. It is also important for us to communicate well with available means. We cannot meet physically very often- that's the condition we have. But to keep connecting by emails, blogs, skype etc helps us not to forget where we are in the creative process.

The ideas on the list all sounds good to me. I am trying to think more things we should do and it will come as we go along.

I always talk from the perspective of a performer, and I can tell that it takes solid time for us to find meaningful relationships between the self and sound/ visual/ object. Probably it takes more time than setting up all the computers and systems.

I would like to suggest to deal with only a few tasks that relates close to each other in one day. For example, one day is for sensors (connecting to sound or visual), another day is for speakers etc.

What is going to be for next workshop? Sensors? In relation to what?

Best regards,
Katsura

Helenna said...

wow lots ideas here, and i agree with Katsura.
indeed we need a structure on when and where and what we shall focus on...

multimedia performance doesn't mean we have to try all the digital technologies, what Ukiyo is mainly focus on?
the five runway space
the movable world of relations between performer and audience
between the technology and performance
the sound
the visual
the object
the sensors
the 3D graphics
the still images
the software
the theatre
vocals
the movement
the collaborators

at the moment we seem have all, we need think, keep simple, less is more.
or we can put them in a Q which is more important to explore and how they relate each other...
more thoughts to be continue...
regards
Helenna

Caroline said...

Thanks, that's very useful. I can certainly work on integrating the small speaker sounds into my performance, having experimented a bit on Sunday.
As for the dancer's sonic performance I have a small 5 min piece in mind based on one of the exercises we did. It involved some of the dancers moving with a brightly coloured object, (a lemon eventually?) and voices-off + pre-recorded voices using intensive,gestural sound based on one of the zaum texts. It could be choreographed as regards the central action and the moving, live voices-off are concerned, and composed sound - wise, as far as the layers of voice are concerned.


regards,

Caroline

Oded said...

Any proposals about how we go about setting priorities?

Unknown said...

SENSORS AND THE SYSTEM!
This has the highest priority since so many aspects are connected to sensors: visual (Doros's world, perhaps game stages) and Oded's sound.

If the sensors or the system don't work for some reason (unfortunately we have seen this before), the whole performance is dead. How scarly it is!

And though sensors have so much importance, actually we have not worked with them so much. It only started in Tokyo.

I am not sure where the scene with sensors would be located in the work. Would it replace the Act2?

We cannnot see the whole picture of Ukiyo performance without knowing what this scene with sensors would be like.

So this is deadly important.

Other aspects)

Paul's images are almost done, I think. They won't change much since the last performance in June. We will still need to explore the relationship between a performer and images but it does not involve any more than these. So we can work on this alongside other things.

Croline's spearkers on the garment or wireless speaker that Helenna or Anne-Laure may hold als need to be explored indevidually. Not everyone need to be involved in this kind of exploration. The performer should take responsivility to find effective use of speakers, sound and peroformance, I would say.

Also as they work on this, we should keep in mind that if we can find another link to something else in the work. The we may find speaker sculpture or anything. The more inter-relationship there are, the better meaning emerges.

Another suggestion is that we don't need to work on a thing with everyone together. And not all the performers need to work on same thing. I have started something with Doros, then I can continue, but in fact Helenna and Anne-Laure may not need to work on sensors. For example, Anne-Laure could work with Paul's images, and Helenna with speakers.

The time is limited and we have to be clever to show our ideas in effective way.