Instructor: Johanna Roggan
Date: Monday 10/5, 14-17h AND Tuesday 11/5, 10-13h
Costs: 6 hours, 25 Euro
Target Audience: dancers, actors, musicians, VJs, code poets
Your Skill Level: expierence as dancer and/or actor
What to Bring: Sneakers and clothes where you can move in. (Laptop if you like), Own material and ideas you want to develop in an interactive crossmedia context.
Learn how to use and create interactive crossmedia environments for performances and installations. Get to know the basics of interactive systems, multimedia programming tools and foundations of dance and movement. The workshop is addressed to artists and engineers with different background and skill level who like to explore and dig into new fields. The presenters will use a simple and common language to explain concepts to everyone.
The workshop will show you how to make use of computers, graphics, music and dance in order to develop an interactive piece. With a focus on dance and motion, you will learn how to use motion tracking systems and understand their possibilities and limits. You will see where they support artistic expression and when they become just a show effect. You will learn how your body works in an interactive space and how your body has to work with the system in return. We will also focus on the communication between the performer/director and the audio-visual programmer. You will learn how to find a common working language and how to understand the dance part as a programmer and vice versa.
The workshop is held in two parts, a common introduction part for all participants and a second part where we split the group according to interests into movement, interactive music production and programming 3D visuals. In the movement group we will explore different ways of playing an interactive environment as an instrument. With a closer look on the performer itself we investigate how interactive environments can support artistic work, how much freedom performers have and when they may become slaves of the environment. On the audio-visual side you'll be introduced to programming environments for realtime interaction (Ableton Live and VVVV).
The workshop is supposed to equip you for working on a performance or installation which may be presented to the public at the end of the festival. After the workshop you are free to sponatously start a working group or join an existing group. Each group should contain diverse members with all the skills required to realise an idea. For that a group will have to focus on some self-selected content and the way in which you like to transport the content to the audience. The workshop instructors will be available to help all groups in the realisation.