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By
Dawn Lille
ART
TIMES September 2006
The
current term “new media” is about
the intersection of art and technology in every day life and usually involves
social and political discourse. This digital technology provides a process
in which the computer can transform and change all forms of traditional
art making.
The
evolving creative process, shaped by the computer, is enabling artists
to develop new models. Images can be layered and combined; they can be
taken apart and recombined in a different way, much as the Cubist painters
did, and one media can be transcoded and changed into another. In the computer everything is reduced to the same language.
Thus a static image can be made into sound, a dancer’s heartbeat can be
sent through the machine, controlling the music, and the moving body can
create a complex tracing system. In video motion sensing a viewer’s or
dancer’s body can move the body of a character on the screen, can generate
speech and can alter or create a sound track.
Thus
the avant-garde, in creating total immersion environments, is trying to
join art and life and to look at the role of both the audience and the
performer in a different, interacting manner.
Troika
Ranch is the name of a contemporary arts group that describes itself as
a digital dance theater company whose mission is to “create live performances
that hybridize dance, theater and interactive digital media” in a layered
manner. The name reflects the equal input of the three elements, all interacting
with both the constantly changing new technologies and each other.
Co-artistic
directors Dawn Stoppiello and Mark Coniglio met when they were students
at the California Institute of the Arts, she in dance under Bella Lewitsky
and he in music under Morton Subotnick, the electronic music pioneer.
They created their first piece together in 1989 in a class for composers
and choreographers. They were already experimenting with computers and
this first concert involved a performance artist, a filmmaker, a visual
artist, 12 dancers, choreography by Stoppiello, music by Conigilio, and
their joint need to look at the concept of humanity in relation to technology.
Coniglio
reminds me that the partnership of dance and technology began with Thomas
Edison filming dancers wearing taps on their shoes and light bulbs on
their heads. The early 20th century avant-garde movements –
particularly Dadaism and Futurism – were very interested in the
emerging technology and machines. The dancer Loie Fuller experimented
with light, even burning herself with radium in the laboratory of the
Curies. A group of Swedish engineers joined with dancers and artists to
produce several evenings of dance and technology in an armory in New York
City in the 70’s. Merce Cunningham experimented with dancers producing
their own sound accompaniment by means of their proximity to wired props,
was the first to incorporate video into his dances and, more recently,
used computer generated figures simultaneously with live dancers. Thus,
Troika Ranch, in attempting to produce an amalgamation of dance, theater
and media, is continuing and expanding on an ongoing trajectory.
In
simple terms, real time motion tracking enables the dancers to actively
control the digital media. By making a shape with a body part at a particular
spot on the stage they can interactively manipulate sound and/or visuals.
A camera, using free software called Eyes Web, is pointed at the stage
and creates a twelve-point skeleton superimposed on the dancers’ bodies.
The position and trajectory of each point is then passed to Isadora, software
designed by Coniglio. Isadora is made up of many little boxes and it analyzes
the quality of a gesture – velocity, shape, degree of curve –
generating visuals and manipulating parts of the sound score. Coniglio
says, “the performers know how to play these instruments” and the results
depend upon whether the movement is simple, jittery or subtle.
Stoppiello
and Coniglio always know what a piece is to say and the idea is concrete,
never abstract. Hence the materials must serve the content. Having identified
an idea or task, they might start with a single word or movement. As the
work progresses one of the métiers may dominate at any given moment, which
is what they consider a true hybridization. Their dancers make equal contributions
and are very much part of the team. Stoppiello feels there can be harmony
between the physical and the digital; it is simply a matter of choosing
the medium that is appropriate for the mood or concept they wish to portray.
Some pieces use cinematography; in others the dancers also speak.
As
a choreographer she does not feel neglected. She says the body is not
her only source of creativity. It has to be considered in relation to
the computer and must move in a certain way in order to get the machine
to respond. This often results in non-linear, organic movement and requires
a natural ease on the part of the dancers.
Coniglio,
in his role as composer and technical guru, never feels left out either.
To him, everything takes time and he is ever curious to discover what
will evolve out of the next work.
16
[R]evolutions, the evening length work presented in New York City
last winter, is about four characters, two male and two female, who complete
“a single evolutionary cycle from the appearance of their species to their
extinction.” The dramatic linchpin throughout this process is the tension
between their animal and intellectual selves. The former, which dominates,
requires an awareness of one’s surroundings, whereas in the latter, equated
with civilization, there is a tendency to forget about the environment.
The digital materials in this work support the narrative framework and
are seen mostly in the animal side, emerging as potent, brutal energy.
while the drama supports the intellect. Sometimes the distinction between
the two is blurred.
The
dance begins with four naked bodies and a series of sounds and lights
that create an architectural framework of space and rods through which
the dancers crawl, resembling prehistoric figures trying to push away
the darkness.
In
one scene a dancer spots a pair of high heeled shoes, which she smells,
bites, arranges as a baby might a newly discovered object and puts on
before sashaying around in an increasingly slinky, sexy manner.
Two
couples merge and separate, moving around, under and away from a table.
Vertical light beams redefine the space they occupy. At one point arm movements alone create a series of designs
behind the movers and at another the shapes and lines a body is able to
produce on the backdrop are richly voluptuous. One of the most beautiful
images occurs when there is a triplex in play. We see live figures that
appear light in color, their shadows, which are very dark, and their digital
selves that are also light. Soon hands and knees dissolve into pixels,
then slowly all disappear into complete darkness
Teaching
is part of Troika’s mission and their pupils include dancers, college
students, artists and technology designers in workshops throughout the
world. They regard their work as a life long process in which they introduce
the concept of integration and try to deal with kinetic complexity. They
consider aesthetic issues, such as the role of the body versus that of
technology, and philosophical ones, like the role of the intellect as
opposed to animal traits. There is also the problem of how to use the
materials at hand in order to produce the desired content. Workshops often
start with creative games that make use of objects and digital media,
go on to composition tasks and use video as well as Isadora. Their work
is seen more in Europe, where Stoppiello and Coniglio feel it is more
readily understood.
To
many, the advent of the personal computer, the development of the internet
and the interplay between art and technology is frightening. To others,
it is liberating. Troika Ranch stands firmly in the latter category and
eagerly anticipates what will happen or what they can make happen next.
In this spirit they belong to Creative Commons, a methodology in which
many different artists release their material, or sections of it, to be
used by others, free of charge. To them, the opportunities and possibilities
are boundless.