Improvisation based live performance system in which the body relates and interacts with its immediate and extended environments (sound, light, image, data) in real time.
To have other bodies in the space thinking and working through ideas I had invited the kenyan/german dancer Waithera Rina (Wai) to work with me for part of the residency. I also invited three local dancers Yeheniya Kravets, Angela Stöcklin and Priscilla Mignon to join the process.
By its presence, movement and gesture the body acts as the main agent initiating interaction between the different elements of the dispositive. Sensing and working from the spine the performer(s) given task is to explore the space, generate movement, gesture and states of body, engage the visual texture, the sound and each other. They are confronted with/juxtaposed against an immersive visual texture derived from their image and driven by their own gesture. The texture is a sort of mask with which they engage the world; revealing yet hiding something of them.
They can interact with the texture. It reacts with varying levels of delay, recursion and visual (colour, blur, clarity, scale, deformation) abstraction dependent on a number of variable conditions and parameters. The slightest movement on the dancer’s part can resonate across the whole surface. Some of the variables (immobility, rapidity of movement, position in space) that affect the visual texture are at times within their control. In TouchDesigner I can independently control the weight of pixel displacement, level of software feedback or alternate between processed image and clean camera feed. Adjusting camera zoom between close-up and wide shot allows to alternate the feedback between singular and recursive image.
interactively generated real-time visual texture - Yevheniya Kravets (dance), Rapassa Otieno (nyatiti), Opiyo Okach (sound texture, interaction design)