Introduction | Background Work | Expressive Processing | Conclusions and Future Work | Bibliography

Background Work

Expressive processing follows up previous work carried out by the Author over the last five years. It concerns use of technology to mediate a performative event departing from physical gesture and dance.

Expression’s Limits (2000)

“(…) Using my body as an element and light as another, treating booth as equivalents and simply crating forms (…)

From an interview by Bruce Nauman in “Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words; Writings and Interviews. Cambrige, Massachussets: MIT Press, 2005, p, 123”.

Bruce Neuman’s work “Manipulating a Fluorescent Tube” (1969) consists of a 62 minutes video art piece in which Neuman himself spins, twists and manipulates a long fluorescent tube resulting in strong set of visual constrains and boundaries to his own movement.
Likewise, in professional classic dancing, natural physical constrains from the human body are impediments to perform full amplitude gestures required in performance. In classic dance it is not common attempting to take advantage of constraints in order to create diverse expression forms.
Therefore, the project Expression’s Limits, carried out by the author in 2000, places a professional classic dancer inside a small box (1 X 0,8 X 0,8 m) framed by metal bars and wrapped in wires.

The dancer had very limited space to move, yet, the box was placed in a very large and wide space (the UCP Auditorium at Porto), which the dancer could see and hope to reach.
This setup resulted in a live performance based on an infinite number of short range movements constrained to an extreme extension by the spatial limitations imposed to the dancer. The live performance included also a real-time video projection from detailed shots of the dancer’s body, articulated with a specific lightning and providing a scenic effect to the audience which induced them to be aware of the micro-movements performed by the dancer.
Furthermore, the original video footage from this performance was later edited and post-produced resulting in Video-Dance piece.

Human Processing (2003)

Human processing is a live performance that moves towards the analogy between computer information processing and the role of a performer. It follows the work of Expression’s Limits providing a constrained dance performative paradigm approaching it from a different spatial and sensorial perspective.
In this piece requirements for the subject dancer aimed a different profile, which included experience in contemporary experimental dance and theatre.
The final scenario implied visual stimulus from abstract imagery and the physical setup sustaining the dancer with an unusual format in terms of stability and equilibrium.
The system had a triple-screen panoramic structure that revolved the dancer suspended from the ceiling with a rope.
The performer was exposed to three different immersive environments generated by video retro-projections in each screen.

The data structure and video flow was controlled and generated in real time by a MAX/MSP; Jitter patch. The input parameters that would define the video stream structure were controlled manually by an additional performer (operator) which would act according to his interpretation of the dancers reactions (Human processing).

Likewise, the dancer, limited by his physical constraints (suspension from the ceiling), would react spontaneously to way he personally processed the video panorama determined by operator’s selection.
The resulting interaction loop includes two main poles, which are the dancer and the operator. Booth of them interpret information cognitively and make decisions that result in two Human Processing stages in the loop. Nevertheless communication between these two people is somewhat different and similar.

Even though from the operator to the dancer, information is mediated trough a computer network, and from the dancer to the operator communication is established by direct visual cognition, the process is very similar since booth have to interpret multithreaded information by emotional, sensitive and empirical processes and make decisions expressed by motor control.
Furthermore, booth are limited beyond their usual range of choices, since the dancer’s movement is constrained (by being suspended, and unable to touch the floor, he cannot use any sort of body impulse) and the choices of the operator are limited to the raw material prepared for the performance. Nevertheless it was shown that this was not an impediment to achieve a meaningful and rich performative result in which the performer and the operator extended the boundaries of the supposed constraints.
Human to human interaction is obviously not new, however when technology is introduced in the loop, it is often undervalued and underused. Human processing presented Human to Human communication processes, with and without computer mediation at the same level.

Human processing was presented in June 2003 for a live audience at Porto School of Arts.

Bestiario (2005)

Bestiario is an installation Project devolved in the course of studies of Virtual Reality at the Digital Arts Master program at Pompeu Fabra’s University, Barcelona. It is based on the original writings of “Bestiaro Medieval” transposed to a contemporary context.
The installation consists of a space where the user can interact with his own shadow (computer generated, and projected in a full body scale screen) in such a way that his body movements can generate extensions in his shadow representation that will resemble animal forms.
This experience takes place in a delimited area that is surveyed by a video camera that detects infrared light. The video data is analyzed by an Eyesweb Software Patch and converted to a Logic Format (MIDI) which is then sent to a computer running the Virtools Software providing control data to the computer generated shadow.

Bestiario is a virtual reality experiment from which emerges the sense that human condition relies on a hybrid nature. A person can be aware of this nature, or not, but it is always present.
This installation was presented as an academic project at Pompeu Fabra University in June 2005 and to the general public in October 2005 during the International Animation Festival week at “Casa da Animação” – Porto, Portugal.

| A Project by Helena Figueiredo: hfortuna[at]final.upf.es; hfigueiredo[at]porto.ucp.pt |