The expansive wood floor and whitewashed walls meant for displaying art are obscured by clutter. There are five computers, three Wiimotes, two PA systems, one video mixer, a keyboard synthesizer, a projector, a trumpet, a saxophone, toulle, feathers and countless wires and microphones scattered across the space for a new kind of event.
“We were sort of doing a three ring circus of technology acts,” mused Dr. Bradford Blackburn, a University of Tampa professor of music and figurative ringmaster for interACTION 1.0. “I’d say probably 90 percent of it was improvised and about 10 percent of it was planned,” he continued. “The fact that there’s a level of spontaneity is part of what makes the [show] interesting.”
The event featured experimental music using innovative technology and interactive programs such as the Max programming environment, including components MSP and Jitter. Framed with wires, the performance space in Scarfone/Hartley Art Gallery was surrounded by Mac Books and programmers furiously typing away into complex systems. The music was provided by instruments of both the musical kind and the intangible programs of a computer.
In the center of the space was the most surprising component of the whole show. Red, blue, green and yellow exercise balls were rolled across the floor by dancers wearing white shirts who dictated the discordant, and futuristic-sounding music.
A good sized crowd of about 50 people look on with confusion and intrigue. Audience member Rich Meehan liked the performance, but didn’t completely understand it. “I was a little confused,” he admitted. “It reminded me of dubstep and the dancers did a good job of connecting with the sounds.”
A month before their Thursday, Nov. 3 performance, the students from Dr. Blackburn’s Interactive Arts Ensemble met with adjunct professor Ya-Ju Lin’s Dance Improvisation students. Musicians were assigned to groups of dancers, and it was up to the students to work out a rehearsal schedule and concept for their piece.
The opening piece with the exercise balls was the most progressive technologically of all the dances utilizing the “Optical Motion Capture space” and a “location/color tracking and sound design.”
A camera using the program Cyclops, viewed a 4×4 workspace. “Each square recognized a different color as a different sound so that one square that saw red would react to the red,” explained Gordon Bonnett, one of the dancers who participated in the piece. Sound samples of distorted pianos, guitars and cellos were set off as different colored balls flew and rolled across the view of the camera.
His partner, Rodner Salgado, worked on the piece with him and came up with the concept of using multi-colored rubber exercise balls to set off the Cyclops technology. In the beginning of the piece, the duo experienced one of the downsides of this progressive program when the camera didn’t recognize the colors.
“I had this whole idea of giving a ball to an audience member and having them throw it so they would make a sound. I tried it twice and nothing happened because it wasn’t working,” said Bonnett, “but you can’t think negatively while you’re improving.”
“Working with any kind of electrical modern age technological equipment is always unpredictable and sometimes messy,” added Salgado.
It’s the unpredictability of both improv and technology that lent itself so well to the nature of the performances. With improv in dance, the next move is always a surprise and sometimes, no matter how much preparation is put forth, with technology the same kind of spontaneity can occur.
Another innovation used during the event was the Wiimote, a Wii remote programmed with OSCulator, or open sound control, an application that allowed the dancers to send different types of signals from the Accelerometer program in the Wiimote. “The [interactive art] students were then able to build programs that they coded in Max where they took those decoded wiimote signals and then mapped that to different types of parameters like controlling pitch, amplitude, instrument changes,” explained Dr. Blackburn. “That was what happened in Eugenio Moleiro’s composition, and Sam Bolenbaugh used them to trigger sound samples.”
Moleiro and Bolenbaugh’s dancers both came up with very different concepts for each piece using the Wiimotes. Allison Service and Salgado were both in Moleiro’s piece as a fairy and bird-creature from a different land who discovered the technology and used it to torment the musician.
Salgado, who wore an elaborate costume of brown bird wings, a yellow beak and headpiece, climbed onto the table where Moleiro sat at his piano synthesizer, and both often screamed at each other over the gargling sounds of the musical samples. “I am all about keeping the audience awake and present,” said Salgado.
In the Bolenbaugh piece, dancers Ali Cloutier and Lauren Albro danced with Wiimotes in black sports bras and multi-color tutus. Albro had difficult time handling the technology on top of the improvisation, as well as the short preparation time the groups had to put together their piece.
“The Wiimotes were really challenging to work with because of the fact that the slightest movement would loop our music and start it all over, so we had to be really careful if we wanted the music to play or start over,” said Albro. “It definitely felt frustrating most of the time because of the fact that we were not given the opportunity to rehearse and have a set thing of what to do instead of having two dancers dancing by themselves at the same time looking chaotic.”
Interactive Video Programmer, Jillian Shannon, described the night as a kind of theatrical drama. Her contribution to a saxophone/dancer piece involved a projected video of a girl taking photos with different neon filters with the concept of “breaking the fourth wall” in mind; a concept that rang true through every performance as the dancers and musicians interacted not only with each other, but with the people who watched on in amazement.
“I think that musical performances are always like dramas in a sense,” commented Dr. Blackburn. “You don’t know if someone is going to lose their place in the middle of the concerto…with technology the drama is just, ‘Is it going to work?’”
The saxophone piece that Shannon gave a backdrop to really exhibited this interactive nature of technology, music and movement. “I played sax in the mike and wave forms changed and switched as I improved,” said saxophone player Markus Zakaria, “When she [dancer Liz Frattalone] stomped her foot, she would lead, and when I stomped my foot, I would lead.”
“We switched off a few times” Frattallone laughed.
Usually, there are four paradigms in the world of dancer/music communication. The first is when a dancer picks music and gestures are somewhat pre-determined due to rhythm and phrasing. The second way is if the dancer creates the movement and writes the music to match. In the dance world, the Cage/Cunningham dynamic of choreography refers to composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham who would only set an amount of time for the music to play and dancers to dance, then come together the day of the performance and see how the two interacted.
“The fourth way which is what we were trying for with the interaction event, was that the [music and dancer] are mutually interchangeable with each other and they control each other through the medium of technology,” said Dr. Blackburn. He sees the Frattallone and Zarkaria connection as a perfect example; “It’s an organic connection.”
Dr. Blackburn, whose focus on technology, as well as an excellent dance program, are unparalleled, began working with experimental music 10 years ago at the University of Illinois. Most recently he received a Delo Grant from UT and built a body suit of sensor devices. The suit looked at motion producing music in a 3D venue, as opposed to the limiting 2D of the Cyclops camera program.
What’s the next thing he’s looking at? The Microsoft Kinect controller. “Since that came out, it’s opened up a new world of possibilities for what we can do with skeletal tracking,” said Dr. Blackburn.
With new innovations in technology becoming more incorporated in mainstream media, it’s no surprise that dance and music have started to use high-tech ways of bringing their art form to a new level. Like in the interACTION 1.0, technology is helping to bridge dance and music together through a new medium of communication.
Dr. Blackburn has not only noticed this trend, but ridden the wave of technological advances in these artistic fields. “As the devices are developed for popular culture and
mainstream use, composers take them, hack them and reuse them for their own devious purposes.”
After receiving feedback, Dr. Blackburn has high hopes showcasing the Interactive Arts Ensemble and maintaining a relationship with the dance department. Salgado is also looking forward to future events like interACTION 1.0. “I feel we all have a better idea of how the audience will be an how the equipment works, so now the possibilities are endless.”
“It’s just a start. This was only 1.0,” Bonnett adds with a smile.