what do you do when your own custom software has a zillion parameters that you want to cue easily, but over midi?
you inherit the standard cocoa controls and make their right click insert cues for themselves in the cueing software via applescript.

when we got it to work, we sent a small clip to our chris, who’s the developer behind qLab, our preferred cueing software.
and he put it in his blog, here’s a tiny blip from behind the scenes of our geekery:

http://figure53.com/blog/2010/02/06/qlab-scripting-custom-software-win/

every time we do this it seems crazy to sit an compile software in a theatre rehearsal, but it’s fun. and we’re not crashing that much anymore (sorry dancers)

Video by Danish Dance Theatre

here’s the first edit of the frost dance piece we made with danish dance theatre. tina got the edit up today.

we created the videoscenography using motion tracking implemented in openframeworks, opencv, opengl and cocoa.

see pictures and more from frost.

Choreography: Tina Tarpgaard (recoil)
Video artist: Ole Kristensen and Jonas Jongejan
Music: Jens Hørsving
Costumes: Charlotte Østergaard
Light Design: Andreas Buhl

Produced by Danish Dance Theatre
Thanks to: Emma- Cecillia Ajanki, Frieder Weiss, Matias Seibæk and Andreas Olsen, Anders Jørgensen, Illutron

enjoy!

the new recoil performance group homepage

Have a look at http://www.recoil-performance.org

http://longingfastforward.wordpress.com

the settlement of savissivik

we are here to research for our project longing fast forward, and hope to stay here for a year starting next summer.
it is quite an experience to meet the sparsely distributed hunters and villagers who make their living from the nature up here.
in the north of greenland global warming is not just an abstract future, but a very present reality. local warming affects the hunters, who depend on a stably frozen sea for fishing and winter transport on dogsleighs.
we are fortunate to meet a lot of hospitable people and hear a lot of stories, and are filling harddrives and hearts with the present and the history of these guys, who still hunt from kayaks as a way of life.

Here it is, the documentation of Recoil’s TimeMap#3 performance. Tina got the edit up today, and it is a full video of the 2nd act of the show.

The three dancers have worked from a base of true stories from past, present and future. They meet here in the court room in a battle with words – from taking orders to making them fly across the screens.

Ole Kristensen and Jonas Jongejan created the videoscenography using motion tracking implemented in openFrameworks (see the video “Timemap software programming” for details – vimeo.com/3548185 ).

Dancers: Laura Lohi, Anna Pehrsson, Kasper Ravnhoj.
Light design: Michael Breiner and Soren Knud.
Music: Pelle Skovmand
Choreography: Tina Tarpgaard

Enjoy!

A morning aboard the Amara Zee, before Melissa and I head of to our ‘office’. We are currently in production with the Caravan Stage in Galaxidi, Greece, before going on tour up the Adriatic.

The Caravan Stage Tall Ship Theatre Company is quite an experience, it is based solely on donations and sponsorships from companies, private persons and cities along the way. All aboard the show work for free, save the weekly ‘allowance’ of 20€ – which is immediately recycled into the beer fund …

The company is a registered as a charitable foundation in the US and Canada. You learn how to made do with what you’ve got, live a simple, but good life.

For more about the incredible Caravan Stage, the captain and director Paul Kirby and his wife and producer Adrianna Kelder, have a look at:

http://caravanstage.org

Here’s a quick edit of a few shots of the ‘09 crew of Caravan Stage Tall Ship Theatre going for a little spin aboard the beautiful Amara Zee, which is to be our home and stage for the summer.

We are currently in production in Galaxidi, Greece. We were docked starboard side, but as we would want our set on deck facing the harbour when docked port side, we had an excuse to go out for a little spin in the waters.

For many of us it was the first tiny little taste of how it is to see Amara Zee at sea, she’s a beautiful wessel. We started learning basic seamanship, tying the right knots, doing watches, using radios and navigating.

The Caravan Stage Tall Ship Theatre Company is quite an experience, it is based solely on donations and sponsorships from companies, private persons and cities along the way. All aboard the show work for free, save the weekly ‘allowance’ of 20€ – which is immediately recycled into the beer fund.

The company is a registered as a charitable foundation in the US and Canada. You learn how to made do with what you’ve got, live a simple, but good life.

For more about the incredible Caravan Stage, the captain and director Paul Kirby and his wife and producer Adrianna Kelder, have a look at:

caravanstage.org

Tina Tarpgaard and i have been working on the performance since december last year, and along with a team of dancers and helping hands we are now proudly presenting the show, and humbly hoping for a lot of people to show up. I’m really happy about the result, and the premiere was great.

I have been programming like crazy. In the show, dancers are dancing with words. Using Infrared tracking i make paragraphs collide, collapse, fall apart and fly when the dancers hit them. All words are written live on stage by Gritt Uldall-Jessen. She’s using her own laptop, connected to the Mac Pro via wifi, and writing in a custom text editor, that spews osc.

I’ve learned a lot. Very early we decided to use the open source real time physics simulation library bullet for the words. I am not schooled in math, so there’s been quite a lot to catch up on in the process, just to make things react to when they hit eachother. Rotations in 3d was one of the breakthroughs in my head, and now i know quarternions. i hope.

I’ve also learned that in a project this big, i was stupid to be the only artist without full-time assistance. I’ve had good help from Jonas jongejan in the early design phase, but since them i’ve been extremely busy, and had to move into the set for the last month of rehearsals. My apartment is a mess, and most importantly there’s a lot of artistic choises and ideas that i had to leave behind in the run-up, because i was the one person who cued the visuals, maintained the software, and tried to keep an artistic oversight. The light designer had both an assistant, and a dedicated cuer – and he’s ‘just’ blinking the lights and playing the music. So lesson learned.

Now everything works, and the code is frozen. And i can sit back every night and enjoy our wonderful dancers, great text author, music and light. Just pressing the spacebar in Qlab, while my dirty code does what it’s supposed to.