Experiments

Video | Motion Capture | Midi | Video Conferencing | Outside In

Experiment #3 Dirt Princess- Video and Midi at the Troika Ranch Workshop

Troika Ranch is an amazing Dance/Theatre company in New York working with their own proprietary software Isadora and their invention -the midi-dancer. Their approach to performing is just as innovative as their software. Much of their work centers around time and liveness. The dance and verbal exercises that contribute to their technique/process are similar to free writing and mimic a video play head caught between cycles.

I greatly enjoyed the two week workshop and meeting the group of wonderful fellow artists. My piece Dirt Princess was my first experience with Isadora, Midi, or Mac OS and New York - so it can only get better with additional practice. The sensors would trigger a series video clips I shot of female classmates and of gritty urban scenes (subways, dogs, dirt, etc.). The impact of the dancers foot etc. would determine the play length and fade time of each clip. Thus their stomping or rolling around would bring forth the imagery of the dirt princess. The theme and movement/narrative developed from exercise that Dawn and Mark showed us about surrendering to the chaos and interweaving paths of our consciousness (mixing everyday with the gutter and the sublime). I also created a pixy filter with the help of Dawn which triggers a shimmering color change effect.

Some highlights of the workshop are shown below.

Learning Isadora	Dawn and Mark	Hard at work
Jonie's Overhead camera	video tracking Eva	Hard at work
Hard at work	Gordon rewiring a keyboard	Work in progress
Isadora Patches	I'm working hard	Mark and Dawn
Adriana and Valerie	Midi Tango	Midi-dancer Wired
Wires	Eva's web cam patch	Valerie Midi-dances with ocean footage
Ludia's Body Tornado	Karen's sushi roll	Setting up his monster
Dawn in front of Gordon's piece	Katya has a question	Hard at work