A few pictures... from Mark Frohna

Beginning with animated avatar... 

End section with 3d body parts interacting with cast

Emily in projector light... 

Second Show

Dominic took some video of what the motion capture computer sees during the performance...

During the UM TA QUOI part...

During Steven Moses' last solo... this one is really beautiful... 

First show jitters

An interesting thing happened to me yesterday as the first show was being performed... I could not feel anything.  I create work so I can see/feel/hear something that I usually do not get to experience otherwise.  All the hours, all the planning, all the coordination needed to create this 55 minute layered work is in part so I can "experience" something.  It has to be that way for me.  It's like when you've done a job well done and you sit back and savor the moment.  I choreograph for all sorts of other reasons that include you as the participants but some part of the process is reserved for me alone.  And yesterday during the first show I could not go there.  I worried too much about what the audience would think and my body kind of numbed itself to the possible disappointment.

For the second show the theater staff asked whether we would perform if there we fewer audience members than casts members.  I could feel the relief in my bones of only a few people being there... the luxury of having 3 people in the audience being immersed in this colorful world.  The simplicity of performing for a few and my body relaxed.  We ended up having a nice second crowd but it was interesting to see my body relax at the thought of only having a few people there.

Performing and watching performance is like a meditation practice.  Not in a relaxing type of way but in a way that supports awareness.  It's through your body that you can see the performance and it is through that same body that the performers can understand what they are doing.  Like in meditation "mental" judgements and expectations only hinder the experience.  An overly mental attitude when faced with a movement experience can only confuse you.  Your eyes will see something but your body will be numb, uncomfortable, anxious, etc... your whole is engaged in a fight between what should be (mental) and what is (experience) and this really interferes with the appreciation that can come from letting yourself go to the experience of the performance.  I know I'm looking forward to seeing the dancers perform again tonight.  I will be sad when the run will come to an end.  This work will never look the same again.  Too many projections, too many happenstances, too many subtle synergies and a video will never let us see the full work as our bodies would have experienced it.  It's precious and my somatophobic tendencies can really interfere with the possible enjoyment of the moment.

A video look... at an immersive experience

So much of my time as been spent designing for the 9 projector environment.  The animation is only part of what is projected on the screen and scrims.  We found a way to bring the animation into the constructed video world.  This allows so many more textures than before... I wish I had been able to do this a few years back when creating for the Milwaukee Ballet.  The environment becomes rich in colors and textures when you can mix video and animation.  

The clip above is an example of animation (without anyone interacting with it...) being modified to show a color corrected clip of leaves.  It's very hard to see what is going on here without a dancer in the middle of the space.  You are looking at a scrim in front, projections on the floor and projections on the back wall... it's meant surrounds the dancers.  At that particular moment we have a bit of fake smoke in the 3 wall/scrim space and this creates a feel of the dancers appearing out of the clouds.  No video will be able to give a proper rendition of what this feels like in person.  It's a truly immersive experience. 

While I started working with Max/MSP Jitter years ago I eventually appreciated the simplicity of Isadora when dealing with dance environments.  We are receiving 4 live cameras (one is interchangeable with the animation computer) and project to 3 pairs of projectors, plus 3 single projectors.  What you are seeing above is our test patch before we start the show.  it's pretty easy to build once you know what things are called :)

Motion Capture 2

This is what the markers and sensors look like on the body...

The weird box with an LED on top emits a specific infrared pulse rate that the cameras recognize as a specific point in space.  We have 4 of these markers... we could go up to 8.

The LED is seen by the cameras installed on the light grid...

The other boxes on the limbs are more easily seen in the next picture...

Once connected to a 9v battery the little box can tell you in what direction the body part is facing in space...

The whole comes together in a computer that then sends the information to another computer to create the animation...

The white wires are coming from the cameras...

Motion capture part 1

In 2003 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign we presented the first ever use of an infrared motion capture system for live interactions on stage.  The resultant work was "Bob's Palace."  While it was a first in 2003 it would still be a feat to make this happen today.  Sophisticated motion capture systems used by scientists are very precise and require stable lab environments free from infrared light (and heat emiting light...) in order to function properly.  Most lights pre-installed in theaters today emit infrared light :)  In 2003 we were always looking to put enough light on the dancers so they could be seen and not completely crash the system.

Nic Petry dancing with markers on his untitard with 25 infrared cameras around his body with an avatar above him...

2003 cast of Bob's Palace performing in an excerpt

In Somatophobia I am using a very different system to capture motion.  The system made by Worldviz is made to explore gaming 3D environments.  It allows us to capture a "point" in space and with the help of another system what direction this point is facing.  It's much simpler than the 40 reflective balls we had to wear on our bodies in 2003.

The advantage of using a 3D motion sensing system is that all directions in space can affect the animation.  This is difficult to understand unless you have moved in one of these environments in the past. 

1. A 1D system is like your basic burglar motion sensing switch in your room.  The system doesn't really know where you are... it just knows you are moving in the room.  If you stop moving or are moving below the threshold the system doesn't know you are there.  
2. A 2D capture system can usually tell where you are along a sensing strip.  A piano is a 2D system.  When your hand moves up the scale we can "hear" where you are :)  Most people don't use pianos as motion capture systems but they could... you can imagine a room rigged to make a sound depending on where you are in the room.  Now whether you jump or roll will not make a difference here.  It might create a rhythm if you are jumping (and the sensors are on the floor...) but the system won't care if you are a duet or a single person jumping on one leg.  In these systems it is usually hard to distinguish a body part from another.  Some do it with colors where a camera can "see" a red glove and follows the glove and compares it to a vertical 2D grid pre-established by the designer.
3. A 3D system would allow us to make many more distinctions.  Usually we can differentiate between the head and a foot and we can start to see how these body parts are relating to each other.  

Why would we go through such trouble just to capture motion?  interacting with our bodies in sophisticated 3D systems develops an awareness of space.  It allows us to "feel" space from a different perspective and this can allow us to connect and integrate the information into a better functioning body. 

Pictures and video to follow soon...

The fallen...

Fallen Knight... :)

This was our last day with Edward Winslow advising motion for the puppet... Thank you Ed! (And Christina, Morgan and Tyler...)