#dance-tech

Ale (visual and lighting designer):

Keywords for the lighting work are

distance

Depth

density

gravity

time shift

Movement

libration

-

dissolve

retract

expand

overlap

The lighting transforms the stage during the entire performance into an architectural machine . Four stage lights are positioned at the 4 highest corners of the stage, while two projectors are on the ground along two opposite sides of that same square. Playing with the different nature of PAR cans lights and projection, we aim to find interesting ways to reveal the bodies and tell their movement .

From the very beginning of our work on Phi, lighting sound and movement have been developed in parallel. This kind of workflow has been very satisfying in the way every small progress in one of the fields inspires unexpected approaches to the other two.

One of the very first ideas was using quick flashes to highlight small portions of the bodies. This way we could reconstruct the choreography by showing/hiding, putting together small chunks of the original movement and giving it another shape. We could easily notice, during these tests, how the body transformed into a composition of many other bodies while being sculpted and dissolved.

The flashing, coming from different directions, was particularly disorienting when seen from the static point of view of the audience and these body chunks, once immersed into that specific space/time environment, were opening up to new possibilities and interpretations.

When we met again at Cultivamos Cultura (Sao Luis, Portugal) for the first residency, watching an updated version of the choreography where the different materials were coming together in the shape of real sections inspired me to push this flashing idea further. As the simple body movements were chasing each other in repetition and variation, the lighting score could lose its spatial randomness and start following a circular path ( the one of a loop ). This way the stage became a rotating reference frame in which the perception of said repetitiveness could be distorted by speeding up and down this visual looping reference clock.

4 lights at the 4 edges, fading in and out one after the other, as to give a key to read the inner repetition happening in the movement. As your perception of the motion of a train changes if you are you sitting on another train moving in parallel to the first one.

The idea of having an audience on two sides came when we were brainstorming about lighting positions in relationship to choreographic pathways. As we noticed it could be interesting offering two simultaneous points of view, the movement was redistributed in the space according to that, and we added to the set-up two projectors pointing towards the center of the stage from opposite sides .

The use of projectors makes it possible to work at higher speeds, and the character of their light beam, combined with a fog machine,  is able to fill the space with solid dense physical light. The space surrounding the stage disappears in the dark. While the dancers move through it, they pierce that material and phase in and out with a backlight - frontlight repetition game .This particular lighting suddenly brings the audience way closer to the performers, creating a much more intimate environment.

For this piece we decided to win some time using already-assembled sensors systems by x-io technologies, rather than starting from scratch and design our own as we did in the past.

Acabei de conhecer esse cabra e descobri que ele era o responsavel por muitos grandes trabalhos de dança interativa que eu vi nos últimos anos. Ele acaba de confirmar um punhado de ideias que eu tenho pensado e me deu muitas chaves para portas que eu andei batendo minha cabeça faz um tempo... Espero que possa conhecê-lo logo, mas já sou muito grato em ter esbarrado nessa fala dele!

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Um dos melhores trabalhos de dança interativa que já vi há um tempo atrás voltou pra mim hoje e me mostrou seus criadores. Grandes artistas!

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Lisa Parra & Daniel Pinheiro - Meta Academy @ Bates 2013

"Solano’s projects show how for dance the internet can be, instead of isolated bodies on screens, a platform for discovery, exchange and, most surprisingly, “moving” physical experience." 

- Lisa Kraus | Marlon Barrios Solano: Drawn to the Screen

As we continue live the tension of permanent and persistent digital surveillance, constantly hovering over us, the use of the technoetic-incorporeal entity towards improving collaboration and broadening of the concept of interaction as a mean for extending our mind and bodies is, not only relevant but, one of the vertices of the social pyramid and of great use for inclusion and sustainability.

Again, it’s necessary a continuous re-definition of the concepts and adjustments of the practices that are analogical and as such have the need for human power, potential and creativity to feed and nurture them.

The space of the screen can be easily erased, shut down, reseted… but, while we grow more dependent of it, and while we decide to keep it on, the possible outcomes can continue to prove the path for sharing knowledge and bring to light the human capacity to overcome barriers and transform light and electricity into meaningful connections that celebrate our multiplicity.

"Place–making is the confluence of activities, space, and conceptions" (Canter, 1977)

This year "place-making" is to engage online with three international dance festivals this summer- Taking Place (July 1-13 in Columbus, OH, USA), Impulstanz (July 21 -August 18 in Vienna, Austria), and Bates Dance Festival (July 21-August 11 in Lewiston, ME, USA). We will also be participating in IDOCDE international symposium on contemporary dance education (August 1-3 in Vienna Austria)  - find out more at Dance-Tech Meta-Academy.

(Based on Wrap Up Session of the “MetaAcademy@Bates” - online lab exploring embodiment and co-creation on the internet using Nancy Stark Smith’s Underscore and other moving ideas).

#Re-Definition(s)

“…we have to redefine and explore what a lot of the terminology means in this space.” 

— Josephine Dorado

The sensorial fabric built between collaborators when performing/experimenting together through the mediated space raises awareness to those experimenting to the metaphysical aura that in the ends tends to define the experience and the results of such act.

Following on Josephine Dorado’s words, at one point in the video of the Wrap-Up session of this year’s Meta Academy edition at Bates College following Nancy Stark’s Underscore, this experience as many others that I’ve been fortunate to follow and be part of in the last two years ask for a re-definition of concepts used to describe sensations within the same shared physical space, an authenticity that exists even though “Touch” and “Space” don’t represent a direct action or feeling of presence in the same time and space. This only, transports us to a plane where the digital world exists as an aura from the physical world, and therefore speaking of it by referring to the already established notions of exteroception the tendency is to describe it as an outer body experience, when in fact the redefinition of those terms, or the act of working within the mediated space relies on a process of Proprioception, where one perceives the “other” by an internal recognition of our own movement and measures the strength and effort applied by comparison, establishing a proximity based on trust, just like we would do if sharing the same time-zone, place and studio. At this point touch itself exists when both cameras are on and sending information to each other, allowing whoever is behind them take advantage from that in any kind of format. That’s the power of music, we feel connected although we don’t feel physically touched by it.

The problem exists when the artifact, the physicality of such an experience exists only as digital and vanishes, or is captured, but the same happens on real time performances, that exist only between the moment they start until the moment they finish. After that is just a reproduction of that action, lived and experienced again if performed live or it exists mediated by any kind of registration if done.

The possibility of solving and transforming that into any kind of artifact is by using that encounter and transform it from what it is originally, through any kind of real time processing format (motion capture, data analysis, sound manipulation, etc.) other than that we stay in the plane of transmedia by not touching the original artifact (nowadays allowed by real time capturing, like the application used in this case, Google Hangouts) and more and more spectators demand that raw aspect of the work, Raw as Real, because that already has been re-defined.