*** This email has been sent from the MEDIA ARTS AND DANCE email forum. To respond to all subscribers email [log in to unmask] ***

Sure, I'll try.  I saw Silent Room last May so It was a while ago but...

I saw it in a very large hangar-like space as part of the Elektra  
Festival in Montreal.  It was packed - I was amazed that so many  
people were coming to a screening like this (experimental video).   
The five screens were set up side by side, spanning a wide space,  
higher than eye level so we all sat and looked up.  From what I  
gathered, software reorganized the clips and stills. The content:  16  
rooms, where different situations and people are filmed and  
photographed, stage-like, poetic, subtle colors, and totally luscious  
images.  The situations the people were is were odd, off kilter,  
emotional, sad - eg an old couple sitting in a white room, on an old  
bed, with a thin piece of muslin connecting their heads, looped, as  
they faced away from each other, sitting on opposite sides of the  
bed.  Some scenes were solos.  It seems like natural movement, but  
somehow very stylized too.  And the mixture of still images with  
video, and all different qualities of image, worked very well to get  
your eye to jump and stay engaged the whole time - it never leveled  
out for me.  Stayed surprising and compelling.  I was only  
disappointed with the sound, which seemed to be more of the post- 
techno-electronica family, it didn't seem to fit, made it feel like  
they were going for something hip when what they had was something  
startlingly original.  I would not say it was the Dumb Type aesthetic  
- at least not this piece - it did not have the slick, ironic, cute  
(as in kawaii) quality that I associate with Dumb Type.

So anyway, it was not an installation view - it was a multiple screen  
projection against one wall with a large seated audience.  I wonder  
what the other iterations feel like, when it is more intimate.

I am sorry to say I have been very busy of late and haven't followed  
the thread on GLOW.  Maybe I'll look back on it now - I am bringing  
GLOW to EMPAC next spring, with presentations and an installation by  
Frieder.

Hello to all!



On Feb 26, 2008, at 3:14 PM, Johannes Birringer wrote:

> *** This email has been sent from the MEDIA ARTS AND DANCE email  
> forum. To respond to all subscribers email MEDIA-ARTS-AND- 
> [log in to unmask] ***
>
> thanks, Hélène, for drawing attention to
> Skoltz Kolgen and "Silent Room"
>
> see also:
> http://video.aol.com/video-detail/silent-room-perfo-01/3391963347
>
> for a view of this work,
> strangely shot as if in a room full of people, can;t make it out  
> whether those are real or not.
>
> The display/projection apparatus however is captivating,  
> immediately one thinks of the Dumb Type aesthetic , and  also the  
> Japanese artists' frame speed /noise and heavy metal approach.
>
> i wonder if you could  tell us  more about the content, or your  
> perceptional experience being inside the room/installation,  and  
> what you (given the apparatus, the constant splitting into 5  
> parallel or simultaneously moving twitching screen images, and its  
> "up" - projection) make of the choice for 5-channel projection and  
> how this affects our viewing of the elements you mentioned. -- as  
> it seems you were affected by the content of the images you thought  
> you saw?  what could you see? how did you create a narrative or a  
> sense of the work for yourself?  I think your feedback might  
> interest others who are joining the discussion on GLOW and floor  
> projection/down projection, and the relations of choreohraphy to  
> interactive graphics and what Marlon called "digital expressionism"
>
>
> Johannes Birringer
>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>  Subject: 	 Skoltz_Kolgen
>
> I saw the video work of skoltz_kolgen in Montreal and thought their
> work also had a very strong element of choreography, movement,
> humanness, tenderness, staging, theatricality... I saw the five
> channel video work entitled "Silent Room".  Beautiful!
>
> If you get a chance to see their work, do it.
>
> http://www.skoltzkolgen.com/
>
> There is some video on the site.
>
> Hélène Lesterlin
> Curator, EMPAC
> empac.rpi.edu
>
> ********************************************************************** 
> *****
>
>  From: 	  Kate Sicchio	 Sent: 	 Tue 2/26/2008 5:24 PM
>  To: 	 [log in to unmask]
>
>  Subject: 	 [dance-tech] Re: Glow / dance projection
>
>
> I have not seen Glow 'in real time', or even the entire piece via
> documentation, but I know a little about it through working with  
> Frieder
> Weiss and my own work with his Kalypso software.
>
> I do have some question for those who have seen it... Johannes  
> described
> feeling uninvolved choreographically. Are you loosing the dancer in  
> the
> performance because of the consistantly changing responsive  
> projection?
> I wonder what would happen if there was one constant responsive
> environment for the entire piece? What would the differences be as  
> viewers?
>
> The floor projections to me represent an exploration of how we are
> trying to remove the divide we have commonly come to know in dance
> performance that utilizes video projection - and that is the space
> between the dancer(s) and the screen. As Johannes points out, we are
> looking to explore a fusion here and we should question whether or not
> we have bridged that gap any.
>
> Also I find the birds eye view becoming more a part of my world (or
> maybe I am just more aware?). Just this morning I was looking up on
> google maps a satelite image of the journey I was about to  
> undertake...
>
> I think in response to Matt's statement that 'real time tracking is to
> free the dancers...' may not relate to Kalypso as much as other
> softwares or perhaps there is less being fixed in Kalypso. Yes, this
> material is confined to what happens in the camera lens, but it is not
> confined to pre recorded material. Kalypso is almost solely based  
> on the
> changing of pixels in a live feed scenerio. I've found a big  
> difference
> in approaching this as a maker of work. I feel myself moving from a  
> more
> narrative filmic approach and into what I would describe as  
> expressive.
> I am concerned less about cinematic conventions which can be triggered
> and have moved into a more painterly frame of mind.  So maybe we are
> freeing something, even if it is not the dancer from the camera...
>
> Kind Regards
> Kate
>
> Johannes Birringer wrote:
>> hello all:
>>
>> we recently started a brief discussion of Chunky Move's GLOW,  
>> after Marlon Barrios Solano's  posting of the interview videos  
>> with Gideon Obarzanek , and Matt Gough wrote his critical feedback  
>> regarding the notion of a "digital expressionism" put forward by  
>> Marlon after the interview.
>>
>> Marlon was impressed by the "choreographic essay", and his  
>> interview was indeed very helpful, providing us with nore inside   
>> information on the composition and the completion of the work, and  
>> a view from Frieder Weiss (the programmer/engineer who created the  
>> interactive Kalypso software architecture), once made available,  
>> will also be very welcome indeed.
>>
>> Matt did however raise some challenges to the "digital  
>> expressionism,"  and i hoped there would be more debate..   
>> (thanks, Matt, to your replies to the~POST-CHOREOGRAPHY  forum,   
>> it is really heart-warming that one can get such detailed and  
>> critical response to the writing here --)
>> I want to cite Matt first, then add some obervations:
>>
>> Matt wrote:
>> <<<<<
>> "i chose elements that i felt were meaningful, that i could create
>> some element of expression [with,] beyond just the visual effect"
>>
>> the use of real-time tracking and graphics is to «free the dancer in
>> time and space». this is not a «no fixed points in time and space»
>> freedom (einstein / cunningham), the freedom lies only within the
>> projected frame:
>>
>> "the dancer is mostly lying down so she kinda floats in the frame
>> rather than having a bottom and a top [.]"
>> "[i wanted] to free the body in the frame, it was an easy thing to  
>> lay
>> the frame on the floor so that the body is free to move around."
>>
>> «glow» indicates a return to the renaissance perspective. works that
>> use single camera tracking and projection often exhibit this  
>> classical
>> presentation. the result is that space and time have a fixed point.
>> symbolic and figurative expressionism, authoring meaning via
>> metaphors, a fixed front . these principles / features are not  
>> reliant
>> on technology. they are contexualised and implemented by technology.
>>
>> "[I] wanted to work with video projection mostly as a form of  
>> lighting
>> and actually using it from the top looking down"
>>
>> «glow» uses performance technologies to contextualise (post)modernist
>> concerns. it is not the use of technologies as concept or for their
>> own sake.
>>
>> the projection allows gideon to «keep [the] human form» but also show
>> the «otherness of ones self». this is not a tension between body and
>> technology, the tech is simply a tool for representation.
>> ....
>> matt
>>
>> ********************************************************************* 
>> ****
>>
>> "i chose elements that i felt were meaningful, that i could create
>> some element of expression [with,] beyond just the visual effect"
>>
>> How would one analyze GLOW except within a tradition//context of  
>> "visual effects, since the performance,  as has been pointed out,
>> was entirely overdetermined by the grid projection on the floor.
>>
>> Interestingly, and this will only resonate with visitors to the  
>> CYNETart festival at Hellerau/Dresden,  there were quite a number  
>> of performance this last November -- all using top-down floor  
>> projection,  one of these works actually using a an enormous floor  
>> fieldprojection (large rectangle) dwarfing the solo dancer in an  
>> amazing way while also submerging her, finally swallowing her.   
>> The floor interactive "plateau" was also used throughout the  
>> festival as an experiment for audience interaction with remote  
>> sites (using the same top-down projection and the same Kalypso   
>> software interface), creating the test site for "tele plateaus."
>>
>> A heavy emphasis on floor projection and use of video/digital  
>> graphics as only light source creates distinct parameters for  
>> dance and the perception of movement inside the lit area/motion  
>> kinetic area.  It creates a set of constraints  (mentioned by the  
>> choreographer himself :  " the dancer is mostly lying down so she  
>> kinda floats in the frame") that is produced by her having to lie/ 
>> slide and move laterally on the floor a lot, and by being  
>> flattened, and not lit fully/roundly, but if lit then only through  
>> white light from the video. Since the digital video/animation  
>> graphics  are mostly black and white,  and heavily using geometric  
>> swirling lines, curves, blotches,,  the human dancer is  
>> silhouetted or a shadow figure almost, flailing across the nervous  
>> imagesystem which appears to respond/analyse her motion.   The  
>> questions that came to me (not about any subject, or  
>> expressionism, or self) generally remained on the surface  
>> agitation of the floor. the graphics move in response, very  
>> quickly, almost instantaneously, and so our eyes perhaps get drawn  
>> to that effect , these visual "effects" of what the dance seems  
>> able to generate.
>>
>> "[I] wanted to work with video projection mostly as a form of  
>> lighting
>> and actually using it from the top looking down"
>>
>>
>> we look down on this sliding, moving,  curling, zigzagging,  
>> streaming graphic liquid response --- we are watching animated  
>> graphics of quite lovely, exquisite power, sometimes beauty,  
>> eloquence, and then, in the second half of the half hour  
>> performance, even a conceptual density emerges insofar as the  
>> shadows or light echoes of this narcissistic dream become  
>> haunting,   a bit uncanny even, as the lively graphic blotches &  
>> shapes (to stressful static loud electronic sound) are now ghosts  
>> that come back to the figure, or amass around her, break part and  
>> flee,  some sort of meta-physical hide and seek, not sure.  The  
>> dancer, whom i had almost neglected, makes her presence felt  
>> again, if in an awkward manner  (with gurgling voice and difficult  
>> breath, as if she was frightened by something, then speaking  
>> gibberish, then falling silent again, the use of the voice made  
>> little sense to me, but i saw/heard  it as a kind of desperate  
>> plea,  not be to looked top down upon, as a silhouette trying to  
>> catch or drive away the digital animations.
>>
>> The history of projection (light) in the theatre  --  a much  
>> neglected area, and worth going back,  i also had to think of how  
>> such current work (interactive digital graphic anims) harks back  
>> to the beginning of photography (Muybridge, Méliès)´and film s  
>> (early) technical advances, apparatuses of projection,  
>> cinematographic machines.  Later,  Judson, and other contexts,   
>> performance art and dance casually or carefully includes 16mm or  
>> super 8 projections, then video appears, now digital video,  
>> graphics, motion graphics.  --- all of this relying on projection  
>> and sometimes the use of projection as only source of light.   
>> Light sculptures, kinetic art (from Moholy-Nagy to the more recent  
>> video artists like Tony Oursler or Mona Hatoum experimenting with  
>> video presences and video characters).  Light patterns, graphic  
>> applications.
>>
>> How does one dance with projection as a form of lighting?  or  
>> light as drawing?
>>
>> it is rather interesting that the technical dimension, in  
>> Frieder's programming and composition with Kalypso, is slowly  
>> leaving the clunky feedback response cybernetics of Eyecon   
>> (trigger lines and trigger dynmic fields) or any  VNS and BigEye  
>> follow up motion sensing software - and poses some compositional  
>> questions to us, whether we still see the answers as structured / 
>> choreographic (Gideon's work surely is choreographic in the sense  
>> in which Matt has carefully elaborated) or in a framework of real  
>> time telepresence / improvisations with "informe".(the informal/ 
>> the unformed). The tele-plateau is thowing down a constantly  
>> evolving, responding , behaving, curling folding slipping image- 
>> movement, mostly completely abstract.
>> The perceptional effort is enormous, and perhaps it is   
>> synaesthetic confusion that begins to grab our attention, bother  
>> us, trouble us.   The motion kinetics challenge particular sensory  
>> perceptional rhythms in our brain and body, and they have an  
>> electric affect on us, no doubt.  The proximity to frames  
>> (strobes), increase / decrease of speed (frame rates) is worth  
>> pondering, there are also algorithmic questions (why did Frieder  
>> program the piece in this way?, what image palette does he, and  
>> others work, from?) that begin to interest me here.
>>
>> I felt uninvolved with the dance/r for most of the piece,  
>> emotionally left cold, choreographically -  i have forgotten most  
>> of the turns and turn-overs on the floor immediately, the  
>> apparatus (male machinery and on the floor a woman slithering in  
>> the maelstrom of powerful machining) predictable,    
>> "expressionistically" Glow is underwhelming,  and "freedom" is not  
>> quite what i associated......but yet, it has a certain atavistic  
>> power. I think it is entirely owed to the light projection, the  
>> electrical prison house that is drawn here on the floor beneath  
>> us.  Interactivity, naturally, begins to look ever more the  
>> aesthetic red herring or, to stay within grid of metaphors, the  
>> cul-de-sac,  it is.  The motion graphics on their own can be quite  
>> riveting, no doubt. As projection on top / over  a dancer,  one  
>> begins to have questions about the point that is made here, the  
>> synthesis, the fusion that is hinted at (female figure becoming  
>> light?, becoming-electrified)?
>>
>> regards
>> Johannes Birringer
>> London
>