Tuesday, November 23
I set up room 220 and finally got back to working on choreography today.
Here’s all the equipment I’m using.
Also explored opening curtains, for an idea I had about putting research on the walls and revealing it afterward.
In my head I’m trying to decide between this spatial presentation of research vs printing a more conventional ‘catalog’ or program.
My head is linking this to the question of intentionality, which Andrew phrases as: ‘why can this only happen in this room at this time?’ I want to be intentional about this.
Somehow putting the research on the walls and revealing it afterwards feels kind of gimmicky to me. But it still feels like it is a part of this work, and it keeps coming back to me. If the dance is about putting my insides on my surface, then there’s something here about peeling back the surface of the container that we share that is important to me. And important to the ideas that led me to create this piece.
Maybe it’s a matter of how and when it’s done.
Aside - some technical things:
Noting that I learned from Leia that if I’m getting an error that ‘joints’ can’t be found I need to create an “if (body)” loop to contain the drawing of the ellipse:
I was working on the MSi laptop connected to Kinect, with both the kinect and non-kinect sketch open today, and I discovered that having the Kinect on seems to interfere with the ellipse drawn by the original non-kinect sketch. I noticed this because each time I stood by the laptop the ellipse worked as it should, but when I stepped into view of the kinect, I discovered it stopped working. I thought it was that I was because I was pulling on the wires and something was coming loose on the breadboard or the sensor was losing contact with skin, but I unplugged the Kinect and it turned out it was the kinect. I don’t know why this happens.
I also discovered it takes:
45-1 hour to load in (this is what I loathe).
20 min pack up (this doesn’t feel so bad).
I wrote down the bits of choreography I have so far on slips of paper so that I can arrange and rearrange them, as Mimi suggested in office hours on Friday.
Decisions I am making today are:
- Do I even need the kinect? No. I’m somewhat compelled by its glitchy effects, but I don’t need it for this performance. What I originally wanted to use it for was to track the body, but right given the diagonal relationship between the body and projector & the glitches it is causing for sensor output, I’m deciding not to use it. When I am choreographing with the light, it feels more controlled to be working with the position of the ellipse and fine tuning the way the shape it creates on my body rather than
- I’m actually setting up the room so that the projection area runs along the length of the room rather than the width. The flow for the audience’s entry and exit works better, and will feel overall more spatious, I think. It also gives me more space to set up a black scrim to hide residual light, if I need it.
Questions I still have:
- Where is the ellipse drawn? If it moves, where and when? Does the ellipse change size? Does the min and max size change (for dramatic effect)? All of this will be determined in relationship to choreography, and I can only program it when in the room.
- Sound. Can I manage to use EMG sensor data to alter something? e.g. to play a sound each time a certain threshold is reached?
I will still use a track, however.
- Where will the audience be in the room? How will I guide them?
Wednesday, November 24 2021
Office hours with Luisa
Two easy options
- Play sine at threshold
- Map (max) inputs to sine to play each time / for the max to determine ratio
Here’s a sine tone being played when the sensor hits a threshold:
Here’s that plus a beep played when the sensor hits a lower threshold:
To work with the variability of the sensor’s peaks - my next step could be to work with putting the input into an array and averaging.
I said to Luisa today in office hours that I consider sound my weakest area of understanding. She said that’s why we’re here, right? To expand.
This excites me - and somehow feels more concrete, more like it belongs to the piece than the previous iteration of audio: Ryoji Ikeda’s “-.” Indeed the beep is sampled from the track, but there’s something to this that feels like it has more... integrity to the piece.
I would like to have something rhythmic to keep the piece going, though -- for the audio to have a narrative arc, or at least a journey. I may not be able to manage to do this with p5 code alone (but we shall see). If not, I have no qualms about layering live-generated sound on top of an existing track. Probably this will be a modified version of Ikeda’s “-.” There’s something about the palate of sounds here that I feel is important to the piece. For me, the piece sounds like being in a vacuum. And that’s what I want the space to feel like.
But I don’t want it to feel ominious or looming. Which to some degree -. feels. If I’d change anything, I’d figure out a way to make it feel less so.
Thursday, November 25 2021
Got to about 6 mins of choreography today. Need to add about 2 minutes, and the latter of the 6 need some fleshing out.
I watched and thought about Les Médusés by Damien Jalet: about the way the choreography integrates movement and breath with the rhythm of the music, about the way it builds to a climax through gradual synchronization of bodies and vice versa to a resolution.
Working on this piece today, I realized that choreographically I am interested a duet between my body and the spot of light. Or, it is what my propensities lead me to do in the studio, at least.
I realize, too, that much of this is guided by my contact improvization experience. Though the point of ‘contact’ here is visual rather than tactile.
So. As it is right now, it’s a dance where I’m following my heart. Which is a diagonal beam in the room. There’s something wonderfully generative about this constraint.
Re the kinect -- if I had the capacity it would be the middle of the 8 minutes. Probably 4 minutes in. To allow for some ability to move. Then toward the end of the 6 minutes, it would stop tracking me to allow for a reveal. Then I’d spend the last 45 seconds or so back in it.
I tried choreographing with the p5 sound sketch I made, but I felt that it belongs in / leads to a completely different piece. I’m not not doing it because Baryshnikov already danced with the sound of his heart, but because I feel this does not belong here. This is a separate piece, for later. If there’s anything I personally wanted to see in the Baryshnikov piece, it was to see some structure, some sense of rising tension and climax and resolution, like in Les Médusés.
Though in tone, rhythm, and energy level I am seeking something more akin to Ohad Naharin’s Mamootot. I think. No words on this yet.
there are many other things that working on this piece has helped me realize / remember I’d like to explore, some of which are seeds above. But they are not this piece right now, not yet.