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
2.2. Project Two
2.2.1. NEON (pre-study)
Video 2.6: NEON
NEON (Video 2.6) is an interactive audiovisual dance performance with live music. It was created in collaboration with students from the University of British Columbia (UBC). Due to the distance involved I was not able to create a piece that could be developed gradually with my collaborating dancers as I usually do. Instead, I decided to create a piece that was improvisable and could be quickly learnt while the students from UBC were visiting Huddersfield. I thought this would be a good opportunity to create a pre-study for my next project.
One review of Locus said that my work was too abstract, and that it was hard to know how the dance and my audiovisual work were connected interactively. Although it had been my intention not to show a very clear interaction, for my next project I sought a better way to demonstrate the interactivity between the components of my audiovisual synthesis. As a consequence, I decided to create geometric grids in vvvv rather than add effects to photographs, so that it could demonstrate how I had tried to relate the shape of geometric visuals with the symmetrical lines created by the cables of the Gametrak controllers.
Video 2.7: NEON Max patch demonstration.
The sound composition of NEON was a remade version of my previous work Oblique Theorem (2012). This had originally been composed for two dancers using three Gametrak controllers, who would perform with my interactive sound synthesis on the theme of ‘steampunk’. For NEON, I asked some brass instrument players to join the improvisation because the metallic materials of my sound composition (such as screws and copper pipes) would sound well alongside the brass instruments. The unique setting of Oblique Theorem was an arrangement of the three Gametrak controllers[40] on the floor in a triangle shape (Figure 2.15). For NEON I decided to keep this setting and create a real-time video processing related to its shape. I planned for the dancers to perform inside the triangle, with the brass players standing next to it.
Video 2.7 demonstrates the main Max patch for NEON. For the remade compostion I rearranged the sound files I already had and added some new ones. The composition is divided into three sections, each one activated by the clock inside the patch. The first section contains some grainy and high-pitched metallic sounds processed with some effects. I mapped two different sound files onto each cable of the Gametrak controller, to be triggered depending on how much the cables were pulled. The second section of the composition contains harmonic notes made from sound recordings of ringing wine glasses. I created a slow, one-minute-long transition between the first and second sections. The third section of the composition contains dramatic, louder sounds with lower frequencies to build up to a climax. Initially I composed the work to last a total of 12 minutes but during the rehearsal we decided to reduce it to 7 minutes. I programmed the composition to go back to the first section when it reached the end of the third section, and trigger a high-pitched ‘ping’. The performers would notice the ping sound as a signal to finish the performance.
Figure 2.15: Three Gametrak controllers placed on the floor in a triangle shape (marked with the white lines).
[40] These were unhacked Gametrak controllers. One Gametrak controller has a pair of cables to pull out for both hands. See Figure 1.8.
Figure 2.16: The main vvvv patch for NEON.
Figure 2.17: The third variation in vvvv contains three spheres in a triangle position.
[41] The detailed information of the vvvv patches for NEON is explained in Appendix C.
For the visual composition, I also created three different variations that would be played alongside the three sections of the sound composition (see Figure 2.16). [41] For NEON, I did not use the movement data to manipulate the visual composition, but instead I took the sound levels of the French horn and trombone, using the small microphones attached to the instruments. For the first section, I created one rectangle and one diamond shape. These shapes could be filled with grids, and I programmed these grids to be denser when the brass instruments were played. We decided that the dancer Annie Wang would start a solo improvisation and then the French horn player Byron Carr would start to improvise after one minute. Carr listened and responded to the sound performed by Wang. I synchronised the sound level of the French horn with the density of the grids in the rectangle. When Carr played, the grids of the rectangle got denser. After 01:45 I activated the slow transition between the first and the second sections of the sound composition, and the dancer Sarah Wasik started her solo improvisation. At about 02:20 I faded in the next visual variation, which contained two rotating spheres. From 02:45 seconds the trombone player Janine King started to improvise. I added angles to the diamond shape such that it would become a circle when the trombone was played. The density of the grids also increased as the sound level of the trombone increased. At 03:45 Wang rejoined the improvisation. From here I synchronised the size of the rotating spheres with the sound level of the trombone. At 04:45 Carr rejoined the improvisation. At 05:00 the two dancers stopped moving and sat inside the triangle. At 05:45 seconds the two dancers started to improvise again with the third section of the sound composition in Max. The two brass players moved in a circle around the dancers while improvising to build up the climax together. I faded in the third variation of the visual composition (Figure 2.17) and two of the spheres changed their sizes in relation to the sound levels of the French horn and trombone. The dancers slowly finished their improvisation and the brass players followed them.
Because of the limited amount of time I had with the UBC students, I did not set detailed choreographic tasks or programme more sophisticated interaction in Max and vvvv. However, this was a good opportunity for me to improve my vvvv programming skills in generating real-time visual work, beyond just adding effects to already existing images. I used three video clips I recorded at Pen-y-Pass as textures for the grids, and I liked how the video footage was revealed as the grids got denser (Video 2.8). This inspired me to use a similar technique for my next project with some video recordings from Pen-y-Pass.
