This is a project log of my visual work using digital and new media. I am interested in depicting the boundary of the body's limitations, as well as visual records generated by data or artifact.
Early experiment of gif notation for ~30s of a duo act. By contrast, a verbal description of the 6 panels above would be: mirrored frog squat and catchers, transition to back balance, roll to duo right meathook, R pikes over the bar and M left leg hooks and climbs, duo split to left-knee catch, dévelopée out for duo bell beat prep.
Develop a choreographic record/documentation for a specific duo act.
When developing solo choreography, I find that my documentation frequently comes in 2 forms: – (1) video record of the rehearsal or performance set to the performance music – (2) written description of movements associated with specific cues
Due to the lack of persistence of the documentation w.r.t. to the actual work (I would argue that the most salient copy of the “choreography” for works like this* is stored in the body rather than anywhere else), mutations of the choreography frequently occur. Additionally, because exact adherence to a documented choreography is often not noticed by the audience, many artists find a strictly documented choreography to be unnecessary.
However, in a multi-person choreography, I find that it’s much more important to agree upon precise choreographic details. Although with some collaborators there is a natural improvisation to their partner’s movement anyway, I prefer to have an exact choreography recorded somewhere to reduce confusion. Thus it is in duo work where I’ve found documentation to be most useful. I’m interested in this being more information-dense than the typical methods I’ve used (which are: a most-recent runthrough video of the act, or a written spreadsheet), and I’ve experimented with a gif-snippet notation that I’d like to more thoroughly explore.
How would I use Hydra/Strudel for this? My initial thought is that I convert a song to midi, import it into Hydra/Strudel, and annotate the track with “moves” which are snippets of video like the gifs in the above example. I would loop the song, then trigger the “moves” in hydra to be displayed corresponding to the audio. I think this could also used as a choreographic development tool, i.e. I could move some components around to see how they looked without getting up on the apparatus myself.
Additionally, mentally visualizing one’s dance piece is a preparatory technique we often discuss in the community as beneficial (i.e., perhaps it activates mirror neurons for retention without over-exhausting your body in the limited days before the performance), and I suspect that watching through this simulated act while hearing the music might be more beneficial than listening to the music alone (not sure if would be more beneficial than watching a video alone, but in the cases where you don’t have a “good”/”correct” video, or if you know you need to implement a change but don’t have time to run through first, it might be more desirable!)
________________ *i.e. informal choreographies by independent artists, vs more highly systematized works like ballets from professional companies
Develop a written notation for aerial choreography.*
I’m interested in creating something similar to a Labanotation, writing a short sequence in this notation, and sending it to ~4 aerialists to see their interpretations (ultimately would have a video displaying all of their interpretations simultaneously).
________________ *Not sure I have time to do this in addition to #1, but it’s definitely a project I’m interested in doing at some point in the future!
Without a more systematic documentation or labeling process, the raw archive of my choreographic work looks like a large collection of videos, which I then need to sort through for relevance.An example of written documentation for choreography. Contains cues for the count, the bassline, a verbal description of the dance choreography, and hooks or components in the song of relevance. (Other versions have included the song time in minutes:seconds for easy navigation within the track.)
