Saturday, March 23, 2013
Choreography and computers
The Washington Post: From pop concerts to ballet, high-tech effects are usually a secondary feature, worked into the design elements. You remember Beyonce interacting with an army of clones in her animation-enhanced performance of “Run the World (Girls)” at the 2011 Billboards Music Awards. That was a collaboration with media artist Kenzo Hakuta, a Sidwell Friends graduate who studied under video pioneer Nam June Paik.
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6 comments:
I think this is an amazing way to make a show simply stunning! When you work with well enough into a performance it can do wonders. However, I feel that some people find it necessary to use it and have it fail miserably. I saw Attack theatre's performance about technology recently and they used video cameras and projections to help their show and their message but it was absolutely terrible. They tried but failed because they way they executed it. But when you look at how beyonce used it in her performances you can see she used it really well because it had more of an artistic quality to it then that of just putting a camera on stage and letting people see what you already see like what happened with attack theatre. I feel that htis can be hit or miss but it all depends on how exactly you use it iin your performance.
Im surprised to see this mentioned as a new thing. People have used pre recorded dancers/media for a long time now. The newest aspect of it was the use of a Peppers Ghost to bring tupac back to life for the coachella concert last year. Yes it does make a cool effect and some interesting illusions but the issue with using a large screen raised up behind the performer to show this effect is that we all know that it is infact a large screen with a video of dancers behind it. atleast the coachella show had a bit of mystere to the fact that an icon who had been dead for 15+ years is no onstage with seemingly no screens or tricks. Not to mention when Beyonce first begane her performance she missed her spike by atleast 10 feet.
I don't think technology has really reached this point yet. The underlying idea seems to be, can we replace choreographers with a computer, and the answer seems to be no. We are on the verge of computers that can teach themselves but its still a few years off (at least). I think for a computer to achieve choreography that flows naturally and/or looks good on stage you would need a program that could study choreography from as many sources as possible and learn to judge what looks good. The article mentions how unnatural everything on stage looked when they gave the computer complete control. Its a cool idea but I don't think its gonna happen until we have actual AI.
This dance looks really beautiful. The idea of dancers looping and acting almost as though they are stuck in a computer loop is really powerful. The skill that must be required to re do a complex motion many times in a row exactly the same way is really mind boggling. The XX (a band) have a music video for their song "islands" that does this same sort of looping. Even thought that was a video and they could have looped the video they actually did many takes of the actors doing the same dance. I think that the live element of this piece probably makes the emotions much stronger. At the end of the new your times video they said that this might be the dance of the the future. I can't see that my self, but I do think that it's and interesting type of dance that can be explored more.
As a dancer and a choreographer, I can say right off the bat that I have never been a fan of computers and dance. That's not to say that they don't have their place, projections for example, but beyond that, no. Part of makes dance so beautiful is the strength and technique of the the dancers and I feel like a computer generated dancer of an abundance of computer elements just gets in the way. Even in the Beyonce show, I would much rather have seen a bunch of real dancers dancing in unison then a computer program that made multiple Beyonce's dance in unison.
I think the integration of media in to live performances can certainly enhance the performance. But its critical that the media is perfectly synced with the live performance otherwise it drastically takes away from the performance and becomes more of a distraction rather than an addition. I have seen many attempts to integrate media that have failed because the live performers were not exactly on cue so the media ended up looking tacky and poorly done. However in the instance of Beyonce the choreography was spot on and ended up looking great because of that.
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