I wasn't thrilled by the submissions I came across. But here are two of the better ones I found that give you an idea of what types of dance moves you can create with Spore:
And here's a demonstration of the advanced character creation functionality:
If you find high-quality submissions to the Spore contest or create your own, please let me know about them.
Merkavah is described in mystical texts as 'the Devine Chariot' or 'vehicle through the heavens'. Geometrically, it's visualized by two pyramids intersecting one another with one pointing up and the other down (like the Star of David). The center is of a hexagonal shape.
We designed a hexagonal mirrored space (see "Making Of" below), which only reflects from the inside. These special mirrors made it possible for us to film through the structure and capture the dance from 6 different angles simultaneously and reflecting in multiple layers. I ended up with a lot of footage, making an edit for a single screen for television in 2002. 5 years after broadcasting the film, the club 11 space gave me the opportunity to make a 6 screen video installation of Merkavah. This meant that we finally could present the work as it was shot, synchronous from different angles. I edited the movements of the dance with time-remaps over the different screens, to emphasize the traveling through the heavens - 'the body through the geometry'.
Kevin Abbott, project director for the Digital Media center, created this animation for a dance concert last fall:
The animation was created using our Vicon motion capture system. The 3D character modeling and the mocap data editing was done in 3DS Max. Lighting, rendering, texturing and camera work was done in Cinema 4D. Music by Radiohead.
David Curwen, co-director of the Digital Media Center and associate professor in the Department of Dance at Western Michigan University, performed and co-choreographed the above animation.
If I were conducting a conference, workshop or town hall meeting for the dance and movement community, these are the four topics I'd focus on:
- 1) How to write about, talk about and communicate information about dance and movement to the non-dance community.
- 2) The meaning of the Internet.
- 3) Implementing a grassroots campaign to promote dance and the performing arts.
- 4) New Revenue Streams to Support Dancers.
To me, these topics desperately need attention in the immediate future. These four areas of exploration all have to do with the health, viability and success of dance as a vital art form.
1) How to write about, talk about and communicate information about dance and movement to the non-dance community.
This may strike some as too basic and too insignificant, but there is a huge problem with the way information and ideas are communicated to the general public about dance. All forms of dance communications -- reviews, press releases, websites, blogs, email broadcasts, social networking sites, marketing collateral, fundraising solicitations, ads, videos and everything else - should be dissected and reevaluated.
This may sound like an extreme statement: I barely understand 70-90% of the communications I read about dance - seriously! The bottom-line is that a major overhaul of dance communications is needed.
To test whether or not you agree with my premise, visit ten websites for dance companies whose work you are not familiar with. Read the descriptions (if they exist) and watch the accompanying videos (if they exist), and decide to what extent you have been enlightened and informed. If you find something you like, please post comment.
2) The meaning of the Internet
I've been blogging about dance and the Internet for three years. So I'm sometimes startled by the lack of understanding among dance companies and presenters about what the Internet is all about and how it can be used by dancers. And when I do attend educational sessions about the Internet and the arts, I often find them very unenlightening.
I was stunned by the polling results from the Town Meeting at the recent National Performing Arts Convention in Denver. For the polling results for improving arts advocacy, only 5% of the voters thought the Internet was of any value and the item relating to the Internet was complete gibberish. I have no idea what this means - what is a "Google Arts - type resource"?
Explore interactive new media initiatives to increase access and relevance (e.g. create a "Google Arts"-type resource, blogs,YouTube) - 5%
Overall, new hands-on approaches to Internet education are needed with a strong strategic framework, or very little improvement will be made to how the dance community uses the online world. It's simply not enough to create a website, a Facebook profile and a YouTube channel and believe the problems of the Internet have been resolved.
3) Implementing a grassroots campaign to promote dance and the performing arts.
I've recently written two posts on this topic. My main point is that people involved in all forms of dance and movement - dancers, choreographers, dance companies, presenters, teachers, academics, librarians, researchers, notators, critics/writers, dance therapists, somatic instructors, certified movement analysts, publicists and anybody I left out - should get together and figure out how to leverage the online world on a large scale to build new and larger audiences. This is untapped territory that is just waiting to be exploited.
Dancers need new avenues for making money. Everybody is always complaining about cut-backs in grantmaking and other economic challenges -- all justifiable. But there is rarely fruitful discussion and action taken to actually figure out new approaches to making money for artists. I've written many times over the years about new possible avenues for generating revenue with a focus on online possibilities - the interest in these posts tends to be very low unfortunately.
That said, there are positive developments. The Field, based here in New York City, is launching the "Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA)" project. They will be giving grants to dance and theater artists who are pursuing new business models to support their creative work. We need more programs like this!
a series of steps which rise up out of the water in front of you as you walk from one to the next, and then disappear back underneath behind you as you go, leaving you stranded with only one step visible in front of you, and one behind. The bridge ends in the middle of the water, where you find yourself totally isolated and cut off from the shore. You return the way you came. The mixed feelings of peace, isolation, relaxation and fear that the piece elicits are powerful. The project is on-going will ultimately lead to a permanent installation in a lake.
Cross shares his inspiration for this project:
The idea for Bridge first sprouted from a simple desire, I wanted to stand in the middle of a lake surrounded only by water. I didn't want a boat to get me there or a pier to link me safely to land and I didn't want to get wet. I wanted to walk across the water to the middle of a lake, so I saw that I would need a new kind of bridge and I decided to make one...I wanted to make the whole thing mechanical (no extra electrics or hydraulics) so that the person walking on it would power it, their footfall on each step raising the next.
But this installation was fraught with liability risks:
The first prototype of Bridge was a bit - well- dodgy, and from the off it was clear that there would probably be some accidents (in the end there were three)...Common sense would say that you should be able to warn people that they're taking this risk of their own free will and let them get on with it, but the law says otherwise. Disclaimers are not binding under UK law, and it was clear that I was personally liable for this risk. How much will Claims Direct get you for a broken wrist? And don't forget your month off work and the emotional trauma? Whatever it is, it's more than I had to spare and enough to end my career
...As a result arts organisations all over the country [England] suddenly became paranoid- and I started to really worry. All this resulted in frankly ridiculous levels of safety precautions, which were embarrassing and frustrating for me, and disappointing for the public. If you were part of that disappointed public I can only say I'm sorry - but that's the society we've somehow managed to make for ourselves. The future of HS law looks bleak to me, I can only say that in future versions of the bridge this problem should go away as the mechanism is improved, making the whole thing safer.
Radiohead's new "House of Cards" video (Their YouTube Channel) was created without video cameras. It was created with 3D imaging and capture technology from Geometric Informatics and Velodyne. And the open-source Processing programming language was used to create the video.
"House of Cards"
And here's the making-of-the-video video:
You can learn about this Readiohead project on Google Code.
The "House of Cards" video is open-source and participatory in nature.
Radiohead is encouraging fans to create their own data visualizations and upload them to the song's YouTube Channel.
If you visit this link, you can experiment with manipulating the underlying data with your mouse while exploring different types of visualizations. And if you're ambitious, here's the code that you can download to create and share your own visualizations.
Here's one of the user-generated visualizations:
More About the Software
I'm going to learn more about the software used for this Radiohead project. In the meantime, here's preliminary information about the applications and technologies:
Processing, which I've heard mentioned a few times recently by multimedia artists is described as:
an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.
On Processing, I found a link to this video of "Stay Still," which was choreographed by Kim Yunjin and performed by Kim Hyun, and used the Processing application for the on-screen projections:
Geometric Informatics specializes in 3D graphics and used their scanning systems to "produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity" for the Radiohead video. I found two interesting videos about the company's GeoVideo Real-Time Motion Capture system that can be used for capturing detailed facial expressions.
And Velodyne uses its laser systems for measurement applications, which are often deployed for military purposes. For the Radiohead video, their Lidar system used multiple lasers "to capture large environments such as landscapes." Here's a QuickTime video that shows how their laser system can illuminate and capture a ride down a highway.
Recently, I've been teaching myself more about human anatomy and physiology so I can have a better idea of what teachers are talking about in dance and somatic classes.
An excellent online resource for exploring our skeleton, muscular and other systems is the Visible Body - I've included screen shots below that give you an idea of how you can explore the body with this 3D tool.
Visible Body only runs on a PC with Internet Explorer. My only other complaint is that the muscles of the torso are not delineated. I was really hoping to see a very detailed view of all the core muscles.
What would be great to see in the next version of Visible Body would be 3D simulations. In somatic education classes, teachers are often talking about breathing, the lungs and how the respiratory system works. I'd like to see this entire process in operation so I can see how the parts work together.
Finally, I'd like to explore the rotation of all of the joints. If I clicked on the shoulder, I'd like to then drag and turn the elbow or wrist to see what the full range of the arms were when pushed and twisted in different directions.
Here are some screen shots of Visible Body - click for larger images:
Opening screen for Visible Body:
Ilium bone of the pelvis highlighted in skeletal view:
For the 2007-2008 academic year, dancer and dance scholar Deborah Eve Friedes received a Fulbright grant to research contemporary dance in Israel.
I think that Deborah has done a wonderful job of writing about the dance scene in Israel and I encourage you to read her own blog and her posts on The Winger. She has also been conducting audio interviews with Israeli choreographers and dancers on Israel Seen.
You can learn more about Deborah's performances, directing, teaching and other activities on her website.
It's fitting that I saw the Batsheva Ensemble perform the latest version Ohad Naharin's Deca Dance at the Suzanne Dellal Center last week. You see, Deca Dance is the piece that drew me here to Israel. I wrote my Fulbright grant proposal having only seen the Batsheva Dance Company perform an earlier incarnation of this work (albeit 3 times). I hadn't seen any of Naharin's other dances, nor had I seen any other Israeli companies. Now - 4 years after I last saw Deca Dance, 9 and 1/2 months after landing in Israel, 2 days after finishing the term of my Fulbright grant, and 90-some dance concerts later - I feel I have come to the end of a cycle. I set out to learn about the wider field of Israeli contemporary dance, and although there is still more to explore, I have a much deeper understanding of dance's history in Israel as well as the scope of the field today. I devoted a considerable amount of time to independent choreographers and to companies other than Batsheva, but again and again, my attention returned to the origin of my interest, the center point of Israeli contemporary dance.
As I place Deca Dance within the context of Naharin's repertory, Batsheva's history, and the larger frame of Israeli contemporary dance, I realize how much I have gained from my research. I love being able to look at a dance from different angles, and with the information I have gathered, I now have a tempting menu of choices for how to view each performance. I also have had the pleasure of watching the same dancers develop over the course of the season and talking with them offstage; as I'm sure many of you know, it's a delight to watch dancers that you know, to seek them out during the sections at which you know they excel, and to find your attention captured unexpectedly by them when they perform something with added nuance or new skill. A part of me wishes that my Fulbright could continue - after all, it's been a dream to structure my own time and pursue independent research with few restraints! - but I am blessed with the gifts of this grant as I complete this cycle and start the next.
Yesterday evening I attended Karl Cronin's "Human Geography and the Practice of Presence" program in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Karl is an iLAB 2008 Artist in Residence. iLand is an interdisciplinary arts project created by Jennifer Monson.
Below you'll find pictures of my trip on the Ikea taxi boat that I took from the East River just south of Wall Street to Red Hook. The weather was spectacular and the program was fun and engaging. As you'll see below I only have a few performance pictures of Karl. I'm not usually big on interrupting performances with lots of pictures, but I do wish I at least took a couple of pictures of Maggie Bennett who also performed.
Karl described last night's program:
An evening of movement and experiences and experiments -- through a series of guided practices led by the collaborators, participants will have the opportunity to explore different ways of relating to space using their kinetic experience as a starting point.
And a summary of this research project:
The collaborators will conduct movement research based on two leading theories from the field of Human Geography: Action Network Theory (ANT) and Non-Representational Theory. These two theories have been widely debated within the field of geography, and in their own ways postulate a manner of being in space that involves interacting directly with one's environment--moving beyond layers of semiotics and abstracted representations.
I'll probably be meeting with Karl next week and I'll write more about last night's program and the focus of his project about human mapping.
You can click on each of the following pictures to see larger images:
The Kinetic Interface blog on Great Dance starts with the premise that by focusing on the body and movement we can better understand, engage with, and contribute to many of the technological and scientific changes that are reshaping our daily lives.
To share stories and ideas, offer feedback, and ask questions, please email Doug Fox.
