Re: hand drawn spaces

Lisa Marie Naugle (naugle@sfu.ca)
Tue, 28 Jul 1998 00:49:51 -0700 (PDT)

I saw Hand Drawn Spaces at Siggraph this past Wednesday night. It IS an
extraordinary piece...the sometimes transparent, hand drawn figures overlap
each other, and jump back and forth between the three black-background
screens. The figures are drawn is such a way that the arms and legs appear
as traces... strong yet drifting off into something else...

Lisa

>Dear List:
>
>1)
>Who can give an 'objective' report on the premiere of Hand-drawn Spaces,
>Merce Cunningham's collaboration with Paul Kaiser at Riverbed at Siggraph
>on 20 July? (not the world premiere -- it was apparently shown last
>November in Ireland). I have
>
>2)
>There is an illustrative page on Riverbed's site
>http://www.riverbed.com/hds/master.htm. The project has involved:
>
>a. Biovision motion-capture -- 22 sensors, 8 optical trackers. The capture
>was done in the Biovision studio in San Fran with two company dancers.
>
>b. The Motion Flow Network designed by Unreal Pictures allows Cunningham to
>explore the infinite possibilities within a finite number of dance phrases.
>Cunningham choreographed 71 new phrases to use in such a network. Then,
>employing chance operations, he connected these phrases into new sequences
>of movement.
>
>c. A projection on 3 screens with sound and lighting which give illusion/
>sensation of characters passing from one screen to another.
>
>3)
>Quote from Siggraph Pages http://www.siggraph.org/s98/conference/sessions/
>
>"Hand-Drawn Spaces is a virtual performance in which dancers move across
>three projection screens and the spaces in between. The figures are modeled
>and rendered as three-dimensional sketches, and are animated by the
>intricate choreography of Merce Cunningham. The composition was created
>with motion fragments that were motion-captured, key-frame reduced,
>footstep-extracted and then assembled into long-format sequences with
>motion flow editing."
>
>************************
>
>The project was presented at Siggraph in the context of the animation
>festival http://www.siggraph.org/s98/media/animation.html
>
>1)
>Quote from the Computer Animation Festival Program
>
>"This is extraordinary. It is mind changing. Computer animation is jumping
>off the screen. It runs through us and connects us through our senses,
>through our perceptions, through meaning and, experience. Technology no
>longer limits our animation. It now affords us aesthetic and methodic
>choices and the creative freedom that comes from that. These trends are
>strongly illustrated in the works selected for the SIGGRAPH 98 Computer
>Animation Festival."
>
>*************************
>
>Hand-Drawn Spaces tours now over the next year to Wexner Center for the
>Arts in Ohio, Fondacio Antoni Tapies, Barcelona, Madrid. and Fondacio
>Serralves, Porto, Portugal
>
>*************************
>*************************
>
>I have found most of the online references... am looking for reports from
>actual 'sightings' -- did anyone attend the 'artswire' workshop session
>with Riverbed March 28 1998? Incidently, that conference has produced a
>number of interesting 'reports' which are available online at
>http://www.artswire.org/circuits/conference_reports.html
>
>Scott
>
>
>
>-----------------------------------------|
>Scott deLahunta and Susan Rethorst
>Writing Research Associates, NL
>Sarphatipark 26-3, 1072 PB Amsterdam, NL
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>email: sdela@ahk.nl
>http://huizen.dds.nl/~sdela/wra (WRITING RESEARCH ASSOCIATES)
>http://www.art.net/~dtz (DANCE AND TECHNOLOGY ZONE )

=====================================
Lisa Naugle
Assistant Professor of Dance and Technology
Department of Dance
300 M.A.B.
University of California, Irvine 92697-2775
Contact Info until September 15th:
tel: (604) 731-8385 or 731-1820
fax: (604) 731-0128