Dancing into the Future: Internet Performance Archive

January 25, 2007

Transforming Webpages into Choreographed Movement

In a June 6, 2007 post, "A Dance Vocabulary for Performance Art," I wrote about multimedia and performance artist Ursula Endlicher and her "Website Impersonations" gallery installation.

In a comment to this post last week, Ursula provided an update about her latest project called "html_butoh."

html_butoh analyzes the tags within a webpage and converts this html code into a choreographed dance work. Here's how this project works:

If you go to the "View" pull-down menu at the top your web browser and select "Page Source" (Foxfire) or "Source" (Internet Explorer), you'll see the code for the web page you are currently viewing. Click on the image I've included right below and you'll see the html code for Ursula's home page. You'll notice that this page includes purple tags such as <html>, <head>, <body>, <script> and <table>.

Click for Larger Image

What html_butoh does is scan the HTML code of a webpage (like the one above) and finds the most popular tags. When the program finds a specific tag such as <body>, it then accesses the html-movement library to find the dance video clip that corresponds to this tag. Once you reach the library, click on the "body" tag and you'll see that there are three different short videos that represent this tag. Each video is an abstract representation through movement of how a dancer expresses a tag.

Now all the pieces are put together. If you visit the movement library page again, you can click on html_butoh to launch this application. html_butoh analyzes the home page for each of the most popular 500 websites. It transforms the tags it encounters into corresponding dance movements. So each of the screen shots below represents a visual movement interpretation for a single webpage. In the first and third screen shots, you'll see that there is a lot of repetition. That's because the same tag was encountered multiple times within a single page.

Click for Larger Images

If you like this project, you can even submit your own movement videos to the library and your videos will appear when visual views of webpages are generated. Here are the instructions on how to produce video clips.

Posted by Doug Fox at 12:54 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 7, 2006

A Dance Vocabulary for Performance Art

On the Networked Performance blog I came across an interesting write-up about a multimedia and performance art work by Ursula Endlicher.

For this installation, "Website Impersonations: The Amazons (.at versus .com)," Ursula creates a movement vocabulary that corresponds to the underlying HTML code of a webpage. You can watch a video that shows exactly how users interact with this art work (QuickTime video file is about 27 MB):

A user sits down on top of a giant trackball as they watch two side-by-side projection screens positioned in the corner of a room. One image is projected of a performer whose movements reflect the HTML code for Amazon.com while on the other screen the performer's movements reflect the HTML code for Amazon.at. The code is generated in real-time from a live Internet connection. By moving one's butt to roll the trackball, users can determine the position of the cursor and thus the corresponding movements that appear on screen. Here's a diagram of the installation set-up and a larger version of these technical requirements are available on Ursula's site:

I think that the online presentation of this installation would be enhanced if there were a separate movement vocabulary gallery that showed, in a visual fashion, the specific connections between HTML code and the individual movements. For example, what are the specific series of movements made by a performer when he or she encounters a tag for the beginning of an HTML table? By creating this video-based movement vocabulary library, both online and in-person audiences would have a better understanding of the inner workings of this installation and would likely enjoy it more.

Ursula Endlicher will be showing her work this Saturday, June 10th at 7:00 PM at 315 Broadway, 5th Floor (between Duane/ Thomas Street) in Lower Manhattan.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:11 AM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

April 28, 2006

Dance to the News

I was browsing the posts on the Springwise blog, a global network of "spotters" who identify the latest entrepreneurial trends, and came across a story about T-post, a Swedish company that offers a t-shirt subscription service.

Here's how it works: You subscribe to this t-shirt service and every 6-weeks you receive a new t-shirt with a news-specific theme. You can access the archive to review all of the news-themed t-shirts and on the bottom left of each page you can read about the news story that inspired the design.

I was thinking that this news-driven t-shirt concept would be great for a dance company. Why not create a new two-minute long dance work every couple of weeks or so that is based upon a current news event? Then videotape the performance and distribute it on the Internet. I think this type of video would generate a lot of traffic because many news websites and blogs would feature your video. Plus, there are probably ways to sell sponsorship and generate a new source of revenue.

The challenge, I think, would be to figure out what news stories to cover and how to stage your dance pieces in an optimal manner for video reproduction.

Technorati Tags: dance, marketing, news, video

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:00 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 28, 2005

Bolshoi Live Internet Broadcast

On Art's Place there is a review of the live Internet broadcast of the Bolshoi Ballet's "Raymonda" earlier this month.

And it’s the dancing that we see the Bolshoi spectacularly delivering on – and its all incredibly exciting to watch even with the limitations of web casting technology. From start to finish, the ballet was a delight to watch. The principals were excellent, the corps was excellent, and the character dancing was even exciting to watch (usually it’s a bore both in the theatre and especially on screen – but the rules change for the Bolshoi). Read entire review...

I visited the website for the Bolshoi but the English portion is under construction so I didn't get very far. And on the Cultu.Ru site it does not appear that you can still watch the Internet broadcast of Raymonda.

Posted by Doug Fox at 4:31 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 25, 2005

Exploring Hyperchoreography on the Web

I've been hoping to find more native Internet dance performances that allow users/viewers to interact in some manner with the performance work. I haven't found many at all - even though I think these types of interactive performances are bound to grow in terms of number and complexity.

But here is one that I came across last night:

The website, Hyperchoreography.org, explores what happens when you port the concepts of hypertext into the realm of dance performances and choreography:

. . . Hyperchoreography is a non-linear dance performance 'space', existing in an interactive, networked medium. The elements are put in place by the creators, but the shape of the work is decided by the user at the moment of interaction.

In the "Works" section of the Hyperchoreography site, you'll find two examples of user-directed, non-linear performance work created with Macromedia Flash.

The first one, from which I included a screen shot above, is "The Truth: The Truth" (2004). Katrina McPherson and Simon Fildes created this work in collaboration with Ricochet Dance Productions. Choreography is by Fin Walker and Paulo Ribiero.

As you'll see when you enter the performance, there are two side-by-side video windows each of which presents the same two couples interacting yet the choreography is different in each case. As the notes ask, "What is the Truth? Which version gives the real story? Explore and compare and maybe you will find an answer."

As you press the arrow buttons for each video, you can create your own version of the "Truth" as you decide which images to watch and compare side-by-side. You can even record your selections for playback and analysis.

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:58 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 20, 2005

Tense Dave: A Web Documentary

Chunky Move, a Victoria, British Columbia contemporary dance company founded by Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek, offers an engaging online Flash-based documentary of its Tense Dave performance, which premiered in 2003.

The concept behind the performance:

Tense Dave can be seen as one man's moment of crisis blown apart like an exploded diagram; each of its components are separated and pushed out to their extremes. Dave journeys through strange and fractured versions of a recognisable world distorted by fears, paranoias and unfulfilled fantasies.

The Flash documentary offers "a non-linear perspective of the show." Through pictures, text and video, you can explore the characters, scenes, and production tools, and watch video clip interviews with the creators.

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:25 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)