Table of Contents

4:3

Project 4:3 is exploring the possibilities of mediated theatre, performative pieces that appear through variable medias and interface forms. It focuses on a mediation of the movement and perception configurations that challenge an interaction and a position of a participant.

4:3 Is also a research, which reveals the design process and laboratory testing with different solutions. Experiments operate in the following areas:

  1. Dance performance with projections, streamed also on-line. (eve 4:3)
  2. An interactive installation with motion capture -technology.
  3. An interactive installation with 3D-sound.

4:3 opens the idea of presenting the variations of the same choreography in 3 different media environments. The starting point for the series 4:3 was Samuel Beckett´s play Quad. This piece has inspired the ideas of our group to the next level; we have developed the content of the pieces to answer exactly to our vision and needs.

Research

by Kaisu Koski

Presenting and Representing Movement in Reactive Performance Spaces

With this practice based research I will explore presenting and representing body through media, presenting media figures and try to find connections with different representational modes. This I will do in a context of interactive performance and installation art, using my own work, the trilogy 4:3 as a case study. I draw line between live actor and her representations, computer generated media figures and puppetry. Question of real/actual and copy/virtual are relevant here. Representations and simulations create also new time-space – constructions by mixing real-time/ pre-recorded elements. I´m observing my pieces with organism-environment –system theory, seeing body/representation and its environment as one system.

Presenting an Organism-Environment

Human body, flesh and blood are fundamental elements of theatre. The ways of presenting it can vary a lot. Excitement of watching another alive person, his physical and emotional movements are something fascinating to us. Seeing live actors is partly seeing ourselves from safe distance, finding a place where we stand, who we are. At some sense, we as an audience are guilty creatures sitting at a play about ourselves, having an ontological equivalence between noisy creatures in light up there and the silent creatures out there in darkness. (States 1988:455) Technology and its possibilities to manipulate time-space-dimensions, multiply and create artificial objects has been one major pathway in entertaining industry, but also in storytelling tradition and in theatre. The way we present, represent, see and consume the human body has changed a lot.

There can be found different phenomenal modes in which actor appears on the stage. In the self-expressive mode audience sees him primarily as a performer, more with his civil identity than a role character. In the collaborative mode an actor implicates the audience in the stage world. In the representational mode an actor appears as a character in a play, which the audience more or less takes to be a real. These modes are often mixed and we can decide which mode to perceive. The main idea of a play is: “Play is really limited to represent itself. Thus its mode of being is self-representation. But self-representation is a universal aspect of the being of nature…[O]ne is, in fact, playing oneself out. The self-representation of the game involves the player´s achieving, as it were, his own self-representation of playing.” (States 1988:460)

Despite that I´m talking here mainly about body, I see it very much connected to its environment. Talking about any kind of action of a body, we first should see beyond a physical embodiment, having non-matter aspects as well. From the systemic psychology point of view important are consciousness and memory. Talking only about body quietly accepts the dominant view in cognitive psychology, where stimulus leads to inner action and that again causes reaction. I disagree with this chain-reaction –model, which considers organism (also body) and environment as two separate systems. On the other hand body-term in certain context can been seen as a description of an image, and activity is those occasions is not relevant. Still, when I´m talking about movement, crucial and basic activity of an organism and its representations, I have to see a body in larger perspective; movement under spatial-temporal conditions. Järvilehto sees interestingly organism and environment as one system. This system is created by functional actions of an organism and there are no boundaries between organism and its environment. The air that I breath is part of me as much of my environment. Further on, talking about movement, time and space, memory of an organism is considered to be everything it is. Instead of separating memory to be some storage space, it is seen based on evolution and individual experiences and constantly changing, according to our actions. (Järvilehto 1994: 154-155) From this, there is a short way towards the aura or soul of an organism, as well as art. In many spiritual traditions, the constant change is considered to be the only thing that persists. This constant change is essential to organism-environment –system theory. Talking about any sort of reproductions it becomes interesting to ask what we consider to be an organism. For example live- video can be seen as organic, but does it have an aura? Media figures can have certain type of an intelligence, memory and even changing memory according to actions, but are they organisms?

Trilogy 4:3

4:3 explores the possibilities of mediated theatre, performative pieces that appear through variable medias and interface forms. All of the pieces can be described as a reactive performance space. It means that they create an environment that enables physical actions to effect and manipulate electronic media. (Lovell 2001). In this case, the performer interacts and moves with her reproductions and in installations the participant can experience the same theme from subjective point of view with reactive space. The reactions of the installations are both driven by an internal motivation of its creatures or by the external actions of the participant or combination of both.

Eve 4:3 tells an evolutional story of one planet, one person and their synergism. It tells about the era of fragmented self and longing for unity. Eve 4:3 is a history of a creation in post-human world, where parts of a system born through cloning and reproduction. An individual is challenged by the search of the actual, real.

The audience sits in the middle of the room in rows having stage both behind and in front of them. The stage area in front is a projection floor. The audience senses that real activity happens right behind them, they hear real footsteps but sees the performance through projection. The image is built in layers of the same dancer. The variations between recorded/looped material, live video stream and live dancer are presented. By multiplying a dancer, the question of digital reproduction, dance between live and a recording is apparent. It is impossible to know which image is live. The set up is the primary model of telepresence, practically a canon of copies/reproductions; a multi- presence. Eve 4:3 deals with issues of theatrical framing, actual space-projection –compositions and following aspects of movement; actual, live video and pre recorded material. The performance is streamed live to the Internet offering two different real-time perspectives through it. It is possible to see the performance through the eyes of an audience member, but also an image of the whole stage-projection-audience –set up is available.

References:

Old project site