Variance - Summary of Process

Final Performance

Projection - Final Edit

The process of producing this final project, entitled "Variance," has been quite the interesting journey. Throughout the semester we have been learning about new ways to use digital media to broadcast and showcase dance. For this project, we were assigned to create a projection design based off of a political/poetic idea. After completing the projection design, the task was to choreograph a dance to the projection creating an interactivity between dancer and screen. As Johannes Birringer (2002) states in the article, Dance and Media Technologies, "Technology has decisively challenged bodily boundaries and spatial realities, profoundly affecting the relations between humans and machines. The convergences between dance and technology reflect back on the question of dance and its physical-sensory relationship to space and the world." Creating this project has definitely shown me how this statement is true. 

I decided to created a simple projection based on the idea that on our quest for equality, we mustn't forget that our differences are beautiful; and when we bring our differences together, beautiful new things can be created. I eventually came up with the idea to use little dots of color to represent the differences between my two dancers. The question was, how do I film color dots moving around on a screen? So I got some markers and parchment paper and started drawing dots. Once I saw a few that I liked, I filmed them each individually moving the camera around to mimic locomotion. I then had to superimpose the dots onto a video of just the plain white parchment paper and adjust the coloring and contrast to make them stand out. After the video editing was finished, all I needed to do was find music and begin choreography. It sound like a lot, but it was so much easier to pull together than the video projection. Honestly, once I found the piece of music and my dancers, the choreography just happened, which was really nice. 

Creating a projection and interactive dance design that could be adapted to multiple performance spaces was very difficult for me. I am accustomed to performing in a proscenium theater or a stadium, but that is essentially the extent of my experience of performance venues. For this project we had to perform our pieces in two completely different spaces, which was interesting to see, but a little frustrating to work out. However, I think it went pretty well considering the size, shape, and angle of the projection changed completely for the second performance. 

Two videos that were inspiring for me while I worked on this project were, "The Alchemy of Light" by dandypunk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MXwJpKToEY) and, "Apparition" by 

Klaus Obermaier & Ars Electronica Futurelab (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wVq41Bi2yE). I particularly enjoyed these videos because of the moments of simple movement of light with the dancer. I liked that the projections were not just a background but another partner in the dance with the live bodies. I wanted to take that idea and abstract it to a very simple idea, which is where the simple dots of color came in. 

This project was definitely challenging, but also very enlightening to what we can do with dance. I learned so much, with much trial and error, but I am excited to see if I can eventually take the things I learned even further.