A breadcrumb trail of project notes
Just saw Troika Ranch’s performance of 16 [R]evolutions. Good stuff indeed. I’m kind of a dance newbie, but I definitely appreciated the interplay of dancers, video and music. The story generally traces the arc of the discovery of technology, descent into intellectualism and recovery of some of our primal nature.
There were some moments of fantastic synergy between the dancers and the video, particularly when the projector was used as a light source to illuminate the dancers.
The video tracking is done using Eyes Web processing the input of a DV cam with IR filter. Eyes Web talks to Isadora using Open Sound Control. The tracking was really spot on. At times a line was drawn up the middle of each of the dancers’ backs, and it was perfectly centered. Also there was a ribbon effect where a single dancer’s gestures in terms of hands and legs were mapped to a ribbon created in 3D space. The effects for the most part directly supported the story (apparently there were some other candy-rific effects that weren’t used because they didn’t integrate as well).
Definitely some food for thought as I collaborate with the students from the Tisch Dance department.