LANDING/PLACE:
animation in dance performance
The goal of this site is to document conceptual and technical development of animation/motion capture component of "Landing/Place" a three-year long collaboration between Bebe Miller Company and ACCAD.
Using
3d animation for projection design testing
Extra Info
TOUR SCHEDULE
About the Team
Landing Place is a dance multimedia performance choreographed by Bebe Miller. It involves collaborators including dancers, dramaturgs, lighting, video and animation artists, located in different places throughout US. Getting together for workshops/residencies several times a year, and over the course of 2-3 years develop a new piece.
Since Bebe has recently returned to OSU as faculty she became interested in exploring motion capture technology as a potential choreographing tool. She later became interested in using animation projection in the show itself.
About the Idea
The theme of Landing/Place is based on the experience of travelling to a different place, and encountering the contrast of familiar self and unfamiliar surroundings.
About the Process ( as I see it:)
Bebe's choreography is based on improvisation. This means that once the Theme of a piece emerges, the various issues relevant to the Theme become a source of inspiration.They become ideas "thought" through dancers' bodies and developped in movement. To find these points of choreographic and visual departure all collaborators participate in ongoing live and on-line discussions. After the elements of the piece and ways to convey them are found they become a vocabulary or a pallette of the more formal storyboard.
The pieces of the big picture lie not only in the Idea itself, but in the technology involved in making the performance: motion capture and video. Technology becomes a metaphor of the experience of dealing with the foreign and unknown.
About Animation
Unknown territory starts from the very definition of what we call "animation" in the context of this project. Stricktly speaking it is Motion Capture Art, because movement comes primarily from the captured performances of the dancers. It is only occasionally augmented by computer animation. Since dancers' movement is not representational, the animation visuals are not linked with the movement by a real object they represent together. In other words, the dance only happens to be performed through bodies, because on the physical level that is the only way that is possible for dancers to express their idea. Once movement is captured, an animation artist is dealing with it as a source of imagery. It becomes the most important visual reference along the traditional visual references relevant to the Idea.
My Two Cents
Approaching animation from the improvisational angle is something that I find essential in keeping this art alive and real. I am very interested in developing the use of improvisation in animation, and seeing how it can fit in the traditional production pipeline, or perhaps create an alternative pipeline. If any ACCAD student: artist, animator, programmer, designer, architect etc is interested in collaborating on this piece please contact me..