Towards a poetics of restriction
Jung In Jung
​
PhD in Music and Music Technology
Centre for Research in New Music
University of Huddersfield
jungin.j@gmail.com
2.1.2. Locus
Video 2.2: Locus
Figure 2.9: The interaction cycle in Locus.
Locus (Video 2.2) is a choreographic sound composition with interactive visuals in which dancers can trigger and manipulate the audiovisual work created in Max and vvvv. With Locus I wanted to combine my previous investigations with the intrinsic physicality of the Gametrak controllers (see here in Section 1.2) and my audiovisual composition practice in Untitled 10. During the composition process, the dancers Katerina Foti and Natasha Pandermali primarily interacted with my choreographic sound composition by executing my choreographic rules using the Gametrak controllers. The visual work was a consequence of the triggered sound; for instance, the structure of the visual composition changed depending on the number of triggered sounds. I projected the visual work onto the wall behind the dancers as well as onto the dancers’ bodies as they crossed the projection. This was in order to merge the dancers into the audiovisual scene rather than to treat dance and visual composition separately. The interaction cycle in this piece is described in Figure 2.9.
Figure 2.12: My sketch of two dancers within the technical setting in Figure 2.11.
Figure 2.10: Three photographs used for Locus.
I composed this work based on three photographs I took in Manchester city centre (Figure 2.10). They were chosen because my collaborating dancer Foti was interested in creating choreography inspired by the captured geometric shapes and lines in these photographs in particular. I decided to place eight hacked Gametrak controllers in a cube shape – four above and four below – as shown in Figure 2.11, and locate the dancers in the middle so that the Gametrak cables could also create geometric lines when they were connected to the dancers’ bodies. As a consequence, the cables of Gametrak controllers contributed to the visual scenery of the performance when overlapped onto the projected images. Figure 2.12 was my sketch of two dancers tethered with Gametrak controllers when looking down from above.
Figure 2.11: Technical set-up for Locus.
The compositional ideas for the audiovisual work and the choreographic tasks came at once when I saw the three pictures in Figure 2.10. I wanted to start the piece with simple movement tasks as well as simple manipulations in sound and visuals so that the audience could sense that the piece was interactive. Soon after I wanted to make the interaction rather abstract. For me ‘interaction’ meant having an immediate responsive environment associated with dance movement during the composition process no matter whether it was easy or hard to recognise. The interaction was the medium through which to deliver my abstract choreographic ideas, and therefore I wanted to show the total work as a composition rather than a dance performance presented alongside an interactive audiovisual composition.
Video 2.3: The first part of Locus.
[39] The range of x, y, z values of Gametrak controllers are from 0 to 1023. For this section, I programmed the spheres to disappear when all the z values were over 400. For more detailed information with Max and vvvv patches, see Appendix B.
The first part of the composition consists of three different variations of the picture of the glass dome[38] (Video 2.3). For the first variation (see also Video 2.2 from 00:00 to 02:50), I programmed the glass windows to appear as the Gametrak controllers were pulled. The more the cables were pulled, the brighter the image of the windows became. When the end of the cables was reached, the colour of the windows changed to purple. I imagined how I see an afterimage, which is usually purple to my eyes, after I see a bright flash of light. I used the ringing sound of wine glasses in different pitches and a short gong sound to accompany the purple image. Here, my choreographic task for the two dancers was: Tether the cables one by one slowly (total four each). Continue this act until you hear the sound of ‘gong’ thirty times so that the next part starts. For the first part of the composition, my choreographic tasks were mostly aimed at letting the dancers get used to moving around gradually with the tethered controllers. With this movement task, when a dancer pulled the cable until the end, the dancer realized that the tethered part of the body was no longer free. This provoked them to move the rest of the body while isolating the tethered part.
For the second variation (see Video 2.2 from 02:50 to 04:50), I kept almost the same effect for the visuals, only changing the brightness of each glass window piece when the cables were pulled. For the grainy and glassy sounds the length of the cables changed only their volume. The range of volume change was subtle and this was the moment where the abstract interaction started. Although the interaction was very subtle in the second variation, I intentionally made a sudden transition in sound between the first and the second variation so that the dancers could notice that the second variation was started by sound. By this moment, the dancers were tethered with four cables each, and my choreographic task was: Improvise as duet for 2 minutes. Explore the movable space between and around each other’s body. This movement task was intended to get the dancers used to moving with their tethered bodies and also with each other within the performance space.
For the third variation (see Video 2.2 from 04:50 to 06:50), I added a blurring effect to the visual when the cables were pulled. Similarly, I added some reverb effects to the grainy and glassy sounds. The choreographic task for this part was: Perform as solo for 1 minute each. When the solo is finished, move to the side and detach three cables. This movement task was intended to give each dancer some free solo improvisational moments.
Video 2.4: The second part of Locus.
The second part of the composition consists of two variations on the picture of Manchester central railway station (Video 2.4). I wanted to transform the picture into a completely different object so that it lost the sense of being an image from a building. I created a sphere in vvvv and used the picture as its texture. I added a rotating but glitch-like irregular movement to the sphere. I programmed so that one sphere would appear for 15 seconds when the second part started, and then more spheres would be populated subsequently depending on the length of the pulled cables. I synchronised the sound of clicks with the glitch-like rotating movement so that the movement of the sphere would abruptly trigger the clicking sound as though there was a playback error. For this part (see Video 2.2 from 06:50 to 07:50), the dancers were tethered with only one cable each so that they were able to move more freely. The choreographic task was: Improvise freely inspired by the projected visual for 1 minute. At the end of the improvisation connect the rest of the Gametrak cables to each other’s body (three more each). Foti suggested creating a round shape with her arms and spinning around the space and Pandermali followed.
[38] The detailed explanation of my vvvv and Max patches for this composition is in Appendix B.
For the next variation (see Video 2.2 from 07:50 to 09:33), I mapped the spheres to move according to the x and y values of the Gametrak controllers, with lines drawn between the spheres. I also programmed the spheres to disappear and only show the lines when all the Gametrak controllers were pulled more than a certain length.[39] I used the sound of cicadas again but cicadas from different regions, singing at a lower frequency than those I heard in Thailand. When I chopped the sound of cicadas to a very short length, they sounded like an electric buzz and I wanted to use this sound for the odd movement of the spheres. When all the spheres disappeared, I programmed the ambience of a rain forest to play. In order to move on to the next part of the composition, the dancers had to trigger the rain forest sound ten times. The choreographic task here was: Improvise as a duet at a fast speed and trigger the rain forest sound ten times. By this point, the dancers were used to moving with the tethered controllers, so they could speed up their improvised movements.
Video 2.5: The third part of Locus.
The third part of the composition consists of two variations (Video 2.5). First, I made the picture of the door appear and then create another cube with the same picture of the door whenever the cables were pulled beyond a certain length (see Video 2.2 from 9:33 to 11:33). Secondly, I synchronised some sounds of clicks and a highly processed sound of flipping book pages in different pitches with the movement of the cubes. The choreographic task was: One of the dancers to slowly detach all the cables from their body and attach them to the other dancer one by one. Do this task for 2 minutes. As a result, Foti detached all the cables from her body and attached them to Pandermali. Whenever Foti attached another cable onto Pandermali’s body, Pandermali checked how the tethered part could be moved.
For the next variation, I made the cubes change their textures randomly with the pictures I used for all three parts. From this moment, the interactive sound and visual synthesis was disabled (see Video 2.2 from 11:33 to 14:20). I wanted to recreate the glitch moment I had during the creation of Untitled 10 with the entangled and glitch-like repetitive movement I had discovered in the previous experiment with the Gametrak controllers (see here in Section 1.2). The choreographic task here was: The freed dancer and the entangled dancer freely improvise. Show the contrast of movements with your different physical circumstances. As a result, Foti moved around Pandermali at a fast speed, and Pandermali moved very fast with the tethered controllers.
As shown in Figure 2.9, the Gametrak controllers were used not only to stimulate the dancers visually, but also to ‘restrict’ the size and shape of the dancers’ kinesphere. The reason that I decided to provoke the dancers to improvise with this special condition was in order to encourage them to resist their habitual movements. This is my method for employing directed improvisation, using a problem-solving technique as a compositional strategy as well as to discover new ways of moving. Notoriously, Merce Cunningham rejected improvisation because he resisted his instinctive preferences to create more innovative choreography (Copeland, 2004: 80). However, I did not want to eliminate intuitive decisions from my dancers. My intention was to let the dancers contribute their movement knowledge and skills to the choreography beyond their own habits. In other words, this was my way of provoking a “physical thinking process” as Wayne McGregor calls it (2012). As a consequence, the restriction made the dancers more aware of their physical bodies and they resolved the problems in response to my choreographic tasks. The resulting movements would be what had been processed through the dancers’ movement repertoire with my new inputs (see my composition process in Figure 1.26).
To begin the collaboration, I first created the interactive audiovisual work in three different parts. I fixed the overall framework of the piece but left the inner structures to be completed by the dancers. Different choreographic tasks were set for each part, and each part was constructed as the dancers executed the tasks. The tasks indicated what to do with the Gametrak controller, as well as the duration and speed of movement, but the detailed body movements in response to these tasks was up to the dancers. I did not aim to deliver a specific storyline with my audiovisual work, but I let the given materials be processed through my real-time synthesis engine so as to see what would be evoked during the composition process with the dancers.
Audio 2.2: interview with Katerina Foti and Natasha Pandermali.
[His abstraction] is a feeling. A feeling of life doesn’t have to necessarily be a representational story thing. You listen to Bach and you get a feeling for something, but you don’t describe. […] I don’t feel that we need necessarily to have the glamour boy or girl up there to identify with because this is rather the star. I think this is a little bit of a cheap thrill in a way. I think we’ve come into a period of that ecology of environment where let’s say we have to learn to live with grace, not only with each other, but with nature. […] I like the idea of man behaving in grace with his environment and with his fellow man, and not being the constant star. […] I didn’t want always to have the look about the figure. I thought “well, relax! There are other values to humans”. You see, I was anti-Freudian so I tried to prove to myself. And I think I did. But I wanted the medium to become the message and this meant that the dancer as an egocentric narcissistic figure had to give that up, decentralize himself, and give you the motion as the meaningful thing, not the fact of his doing it. […] No, it isn’t [about the loss of individualism]. Because you see then the mind takes over. The beauty of the mind becomes the power and the thing and the wonderment of it. This is what’s so beautiful about it. And, also, it’s freedom because you become free that the body transcends itself and freely becomes a metaphoric thing. (Nikolais, 1974)
Similarly, during the composition process of Locus, my collaborating dancers naturally developed a drama between themselves and the restrictive performance environment as they improvised more and more. In particular, when Pandermali was tethered with eight cables in the last part of the composition, I suggested tethering one of the cables to her neck rather than to her limbs so as to increase the challenge for her. The non-controllable audiovisual set and Foti’s contrasting free and fast movements provoked Pandermali to express struggle with her movement within the extremely restrictive conditions compared to other parts of the composition. Also, Pandermali confessed to me that she sometimes made more of a struggling gesture than the actual physical situation demanded. Foti explained that although the choreographic task was functional, the dramaturgy could evolve by way of the restrictions not letting them move in familiar ways. “By searching the unfamiliarity, we ended up having our own special vocabulary for our movement which connoted an untold story” (K Foti 2018, personal communication, 15 October).
After the first rehearsal of Locus, I interviewed Foti and Pandermali briefly to ask about their experience working with my method (Audio 2.2). Before we started the rehearsal, I did not explain details of my audiovisual work because I wanted the dancers to reveal it for themselves through trying out the interactive system. Also, I did not explain why I created this system because I did not want to give them any specific ideas before they had even tried it. Nevertheless, Foti surprisingly noticed my idea, and mentioned that the tethered controllers limited her but also made her ‘create’ movement because of the restrictions (Audio 2.2 from 00:00 to 00:11). Pandermali agreed and explained further about the restrictions: “We may put some restrictions to ourselves [when we dance], but it is like more mental. […] But this time we were physically restricted. […] it is more … true. The movement comes from what we are allowed to do with the wires. […] Now [the restriction] was strict, but at the same time, there was a completely new world to explore”, says Pandermali (Audio 2.2 from 00:45 to 02:14). I also found that the dancers were able to realise how they moved by listening to the sounds they created, and that also affected how they moved between themselves (Audio 2.2 from 4:29 to 05:52).
I decided to title the piece Locus, meaning ‘room’ in Latin, because of the way that my dancers evolved the dramaturgy. This recalled my original reason for using the Gametrak controllers rather than higher-quality motion-tracking technology; The Gametrak controllers led me to think about how we moved in very limited ways when using high technology such as smartphones. Computer technology seemed like it would free us from many tasks but in fact it has made us move in very limited ways in order to execute more tasks efficiently. However, dance does not seek such a reduction in movement in order to be ‘economic’. Furthermore, I knew from previous experience that whatever kinds of controllers or sensors I used, they needed to be calibrated in order to be better adapted to human movement. When there was too much retrievable movement data, I also had to reduce the number of inputs to map onto my sound synthesis so that the dancers could manage to perform. During the composition process of Locus I felt we were put in a room (or that I had placed the dancers in a room) which could not be exceeded. But within this room we were eventually able to focus on the Gametrak controller’s already ‘limited’ functions in order to create something new instead of reducing a complicated functionality from a higher quality technology.
My audiovisual work and choreographic tasks were neutral in terms of not directing any narrative or emotions. As explained above, I created some geometric shapes from the photographs and also used sound materials related to the visual materials. I used abstract and neutral forms because I did not want the dancers to play any specific roles, but to freely interpret and express the images through their own movements. After creating Locus, I searched for other choreographic works that used abstraction to better reflect and understand my own, and found the works by choreographer Alwin Nikolais such as Tower (1965) and Tent (1968). I found his compositional approach, which is often called ‘total theatre’, very similar to mine. His focus was on creating interdisciplinary work using motion, light, sound, and colour, rather than creating just movement phrases. His abstract dance performances were sometimes accused of “neglecting the element of drama”, but Nikolais insisted that “abstraction does not eliminate emotion” (Au, 2002: 160). His intention was to get away from Freudian-style storytelling, particularly in the sexual sense, which was common in traditional early modern dance. Instead, he was focused on motion as he believed that “motion is the art of dance” just as “sound is the art of music” (Nikolais, 1974). He used abstract electronic music because he thought instrumental music would activate another sense association with the performer of the instrument rather than only its sound (Nikolais, 1974). The same kind of abstraction was adapted to dancers, whom he asked to be free from their appearance and gender of their body, as he described on the television programme Day at Night in 1974:
This compositional approach came about because I had been thinking about how to create a collaboration in which each collaborator could contribute their expertise to the creative process, rather than one medium determining the other. Therefore, the Gametrak controllers were used not only as an interface but also as a common medium in which to think and work on the compositional process. My challenge with the Gametrak controllers was to map sounds onto the controllers’ intrinsic physicality. Because of its appearance, the Gametrak provoked dancers to pull and twist the cables. Therefore, I tried to map continuous or sustaining sounds with volume controls so that the dancers could feel that their physical action was related to the sound they played. Furthermore, I mapped different functions depending on how much the cables were pulled out in order to stimulate the dancers to think how to move with the controllers as well as with the performance space. For example, for the first part of the composition, I mapped the gong sound to trigger when the dancers pulled the cables to the end of their length. First, Foti tried to trigger the sound by pulling more and more with her hands and Pandermali twisted the cable around their chests (see Video 1.1 from 00:40 to 01:05). Later, they started moving around the space to achieve the same sound; they pulled the cables and walked across each other in diagonal directions. After hearing the gong sound, they connected the cables to their chests (see Video 1.1 from 01:36 to 02:00). We decided to store these choreographic materials and use them as the very first act of the performance (see how this choreography is included in the finished work in Video 2.2 from 00:00 to 01:15). Similarly, for the second part of the composition, I mapped rainforest sounds to be triggered when all the Gametrak controllers were pulled more than a certain length (see here in this Section). To achieve this the dancers knelt down or lay down while they were tethered with all the cables (see Video 2.2 from 08:20 to 09:33). I also readjusted the parameter values to trigger the rainforest sound depending on the size of the performance space during the rehearsals so that it would not be played too often or be too hard to trigger.
My solution was to guide the dancers primarily with movement language rather than to tell them how to control my interactive system. I fixed the overall pace of the movements, durations, and number of active dancers (e.g. solo or duet) for each section in my choreographic tasks because these determine the overall structure of audiovisual composition, but the detailed choreographic work was given to my collaborating dancers. The dancers were free to decide which cables to tether from whichever directions they preferred or in the best way to work out between two of them. Nevertheless, I intervened time to time when the dancers were not aware of the instructed pace of movement. For instance, while we were devising the first part of Locus, the dancers were asked to tether the cables one by one at a slow pace (see here in this section). My idea was to give the dancers long enough time to explore how their physical conditions changed as they were gradually tethered with more and more cables. This would also result in a gradual triggering of more sounds mapped onto each Gametrak controller. However, there was a moment when the interaction prompted Foti to activate the system and begin tethering the next cable too soon, rather than carefully try out the given task (see Video 1.1 from 00:40 to 01:34). This would result in the gong sound being triggered too quickly and a move on to the next part, while the other dancer may have not finished their task yet. Also, it may not give the audience enough time to perceive this part of composition. Therefore, I had to remind Foti that her pace was too fast and that she had not explored the possible movements for long enough with each controller. The purpose of devising this process was not only to reveal the interactive audiovisual composition, but also to offer improvisational stimuli to create choreography by interacting with it.
Nikolais encouraged his dancers to use their mind rather than trying to play a role. For instance, in his work Tower, the dancers construct a tower by stepping on or hanging onto a metal structure without a storyline, “yet, their motion helps build images that are fraught with emotional connotations” (Au, 2002: 160). I believe this approach is connected to McGregor’s “physical thinking process” (McGregor, 2012); both of them make dancers create movements consciously with certain conditions and let dramaturgy be evolved with this action.
As Locus was the first practical work in which I could experiment with my theoretical framework, it became crucial to constructing my aesthetic directions for further works. After opportunities to perform Locus with my collaborating dancers at La Escucha Errante Festival 2015 in Bilbao and Electric Spring 2016 in Huddersfield, I felt I needed to create my work as a dance film that went beyond a mere documentation of live performance so as to articulate my aesthetic intention better. For both festivals, we had different technical conditions for the projection. In Bilbao, the projection screen was above the dancers, so the movement and the projection were shown completely separated. In addition, to preserve the light of the projection, the stage was almost dark and the dancers were almost invisible. In Huddersfield, the lighting condition for the stage was well adjusted to present both the projection and the dancers to the audience. In fact, the projection screen size was overwhelmingly large. It was nice to see and hear my audiovisual work through such high-quality projection and speakers, but there was no longer an intimate relationship that I could capture in the documentation (Video 2.2) between the dancers and my audiovisual work (compare Figures 2.13 and 2.14). I wanted to show both the audiovisual work and the dance movement in almost equal proportions as I considered them a total work – an interactive environment in which dancers devised movements with audiovisual stimuli. Therefore, for my next project I decided to create a dance film so as to articulate the holistic interactive cycle between the dancers and my interactive environment as a whole.
Figure 2.13. Locus at Electric Spring 2016 in Huddersfield, UK.
