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Posted on February 12th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: family, improv, live visuals, multimedia.
My show with Chris Jordan at Monkeytown last night went really well. We had a good turnout despite the blizzard. The band we played with, This Invitation, was really good: languid, somewhat brooding, slowcore guitar music, kind of like Low. I was doing brushwork that Chris mixed into his visuals, overlaying or underlaying my brush strokes on cityscapes, panoramas, and what looked like microorganisms. There were some really good moments; I really like collaborating with a passthrough like that. Unfortunately, our shipment of battery-powered slide projectors did not arrive in time so we will be doing the audience participation show next time.
Visual show and free video improv workshop
Posted on February 6th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: improv, live visuals, theater.
Two events coming up I’d like you to know about:
- I’m performing visuals with fellow VJ Chris Jordan at Monkeytown this Saturday, accompanying the music of ambient duo This Invitation. This will be an audience participation show: we’ll be handing out little, battery-powered slide projectors. Should be fun.
Reservations recommended — as is the food! Come early and have a meal; Monkeytown’s got really good grub. Saturday, February 18th I’m teaching a workshop in video improv: it’s practice for me and free for you, a preview of the workshop I’m teaching at this year’s Dirty South Improv Festival in Chapel Hill, NC. It’ll be at the Atlantic Theater Co Acting School. Email me to let me know if you’re coming. Details: > Improv on video: How is it different from improv on a bare stage? What can you do in a video improv show that is unique to this new hybrid form? Homebrew, grassroots video improv is slowly spreading through American improve communities. Let’s spread it faster by sharing ideas and techniques with each other. In this workshop, we will explore video improv techniques employed in the Neutrino Video Projects and other experimental video longforms. Camerawork, in-camera editing, scenework and structure will be explored. If time permits we will touch on networked, streaming video performance and visual manipulation (VJ-ing). Please beg, borrow or steal* a video camera to bring to the workshop: the more cameras we have the more we’ll able to play. Improvisers and cinematographers of all experience levels are welcome.
> * Well, maybe not steal. Please do your best to have a camera and know its basic functions before the workshop.
> Class is limited to 15 students.
Circus of Now
Posted on February 2nd, 2006 by dan.
Categories: live visuals, theater.
On Monday, a few of us at idmi met with Aleksei and Christian from the Circus of Now, a spectacular multimedia theatrical production company. They’ve developed a system called Dylos (written in C++ and using DirectPlay messaging) that does high resolution, 3D, multiple projector (6) spanning for live visual performances. The system runs on 3 heavy-duty Windows machines with dual-head video cards. CON has extremely high standards for their production values — the work they showed us from their demo reel just glowed. They’ve used high budget gigs for corporate clients to push the limits of multimedia theater and live visuals — more power to them. Thanks to Luciana for inviting them in to speak with us.
Challenges for improvising visualists
Posted on January 31st, 2006 by dan.
Categories: improv, live visuals, theater.
What could stop a visualist from improvising on any suggestion?
- lack of flexibility in the software/hardware tools
- specifically in the ability to search and organize source media on the fly
- programs that do one thing really well but don’t play well with others
- lack of imagination
- an inability to draw very well
- …
What would aid a visualist to improvise on any suggestion, using a variety of source and live media?
- a file browser that grabs images and videos by tags/categories/keywords from a library/the Internet when supplied with keyword(s)
- a partner seeking/creating/organizing/preparing media for her/him
- a way of intuitively, rapidly filing new media away so that they may be retrieved graphically or textually, quickly
- rudimentary-to-excellent drawing skills (with perspective)
- a profundity of imagination
- …
Let’s say our standard for success at “improvising on any suggestion” is that the audience walks away thinking, “she sure did engage and explore visually my suggestion of “‘lesbian casting couch.’”
Yesterday I wondered whether I had strayed from my original thesis idea pre-enrollment. I pondered what I had presented to my fellow students and Carl on Thursday in Structures. It feels like a good show, interesting and exciting to work on, but not quite the meeting of improvising visualists and actors on a level playing field I had in mind. The current conception of my thesis show has the following elements. Let’s score each element on a continuum from fully structured (0) to fully improvised (10):
- a narrative backbone — pre-written — for the speakers/actors - 2
- prepared and practiced visual source media for the visualists - 5
- prepared and practiced sources for the musicians - 8*
- potential audience participation - 2
* Musicians have more improvisational freedom than visualists for a number of reasons.
Which averages to 4.25, just west of halfway between structure and improv. For comparison, I’d say most longform improv comedy shows are an 8 — just enough structure to encourage coherence. But the value of this one-dimensional metric is shaky because we’re comparing apples and oranges: the improvisational elements and expectations in music, theater and visuals are quite different. Yet the way I see The Improv Gap in visuals is framed by my work in improv comedy and articulated in the language of musical improv. Hmm. Thoughts welcome. Time for bed.
RIP Nam June Paik
Posted on January 30th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: live visuals, video art.
The seminal video artist Nam June Paik passed away yesterday. In tribute to his ground-breaking, medium-defining work, I’ve uploaded a small excerpt from a performance that I thought fitting to his memory. It’s a brush piece that was drawn with the light of a television. We stand on the shoulders of giants.