IDAT99
BigEye Interactive Environment
During the International Dance & Technology Congress at Arizona State University, many professionals in the field showed their experimentations in dance/digital interfaces, motion-capturing, nervous environments and interactive scenarios.
The workshop I directed resulted in brief introductory explorations of such interactive space, here represented by a short clip from the early evening rehearsal in a BigEye environment. I am seen here touching the space (moving the music you cannot hear), learning the coordinates, and interacting with the video projection of the interaction.
I am not interested in the projection as such, but in the different spaces that can be explored, in rehearsal, with phrases that are musical. The question for me is whether music can have its own space, independent from the movement that we use to trigger samples, and whether our movement itself degenerates into samples of choreographic shorthand.
I believe it would require long rehearsal time to sculpt a new interactive space that moves through music, and which invites a new choreography that is not bound by limiting coordinates and our awareness of touch/sensor lines. Our dance would become less senseless/sensed.
Johannes Birringer 03/03/99