DoubleHeLiX============= M collective: Dance of Darkness

An interactive dance performance in augmented visual and aural space:

The DoD is part of an anthology of narratives called X_short_Stories, each of the “short stories” seemingly self-contained and independent, is presented in a dynamic, improvisational fashion, in a way that each story is contributing into the composition of a larger emergent narrative. The aggregated perceived narrative form, is based on common structural and morphological characteristics found in each separate story, providing a loosely coherent narrative experience for the recipient to interpret.

The DoD narrative is inspired by the Japanese Butoh dance theater aesthetics. The story is inspired by taboo topics and grotesque imagery relating to the body as defined by a recently acquired digital presence. Questions interrogated are related to issues such as sexuality, death etc.— as redefined in a digital world—, and investigate the sort of understanding these embodied 'narratives' evoke in a conscious intelligence.

Conceptual and phenomenological structures such space and place—augmented through digitization—, alter 'structures' such memory, and the new construals, and symbolic forms, affect inherent 'human' processes, such as dreaming, play and interaction.

These new forms (be it perceptive, cognitive or even symbolic) affect the phenomenology of a perceived world, appearing as a continuum in the mind, but in reality are the product of sampling and digital, fragmented information arising from evolutionary shaped cognitive routines.

Human narratives as appear in arts—even before new media—, are indeed a form of digitization of the human experience. Reflected in narratives, even as presented in art forms such as classical theater, is not the 'analog' version (the continuum) of an experience or a story. Narratives in their essence are a fragmentation of the actual story, a sampled (or even 'digital') version of it.

With this in mind media based arts as found in the last thirty years do facilitate, even in their most abstracted versions, a well equipped medium for complex narratives.

In this post-modern setting, the idea of identity has been replaced by that of becomings. Ontological thinking of objects, and events can be considered now in terms of a dynamical post-structural perspective. This ultimately affects the idea of human identity and experience all together.

In this reality the narratives are not self contained, rigid constructs but presuppose the role of a recipient, which through cognitive metaphors, "connects the dots", and forms the narrative in his/her mind. The idea of self as stable form (the artist, the composer, the performer, the audience etc.), is only valid at the fleeting instance of self realization, an 'empty' moment defined always by fluid structures such as memory and expectations.

This artwork approaches narrative in its purest manifestation, that of form and its morphodynamics. In this way what is being narrated is independent of content, and rather defined as continuous transformations, and evolutions of forms (be it ideas, aural, visual or manifested through the movement of the body).

The essence of this rhizomatic, dynamical approach to story and narrative, is the presence of a they to translate the I which together the bring forth an emergent we.

This is reflected also in the technological character of these narratives that is based on embodiment (the kernel of interpreting experience), immersion and augmentation of the phenomenological reality.

The DoD, is a multichannel, immersive presentation of abstracted narratives relating to taboo issues of human condition. Multichannel not only in the sense of transmitted media (aural, visual etc.), but also in the sense of multiple semiotic channels. The material used ranges from concrete to abstract and tries to evoke in the recipient the notion that "narrative is in the mind".

The presentation in its current setup is designed for 38 audio channels (in various immersive arrangements), and 3 projectors forming a CAVE structure. These arrangements though are quite flexible and the presentation can be performed in various formats (audio min requirements is 8 channels, and visuals are rendered in any immersive arrangement, including dome, panoramic and 360 degrees projections).

The body of the performer is tracked in real time and the visuals are mapped to the body of the performer and react to the performer's interaction with this augmented version of space, place and story. Recorded motion captured performances of other dancers are also part of the interactions in the choreography, responding to the performers movement and establishing the presence of digital bodies in the performance, with their own reactions, forms and ultimately intelligence.

Furthermore the software controlling the interactions between the different platforms and collaborators is based on Rene Thom's catastrophe theory, a mathematical modeling approach to describe form evolution in the phenomenological perceived world. In this way the software design itself, is based on Thom's observations on the structure of memory, dreaming, play, language and symbols.

Finally the butoh choreography is an improvisational 'reaction' of the performer, based on Thom's sixteen archetypal morphologies.

TECHNICAL DETAILS (RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT):

The images provided are not the finished performance but and R+D version of it with one projector. Final version to be presented in September. The development blog includes more technical details for the project, including videos, sounds, images of the R+D.

MOTION CAPTURE

Dancer Yu He Lin (Bonnie) was captured by 3 Kinect1 aligned cameras, and a Kinect2 (used mostly for dynamic shots). Skeleton data, and point clouds are used as material and control data for the real time performance. The digital presence of a performer, is portrayed as the shadow version of a performance that will-took place somewhere, at some point in time and space. Even though the actual 'physical' performance has been actualised the eminent digital version of it is residing in the virtual plane of infinite potentiality, only to be actualised again to a shadow Image of its nature at the time of the performance as something different.