TimeMap #3

Photo by Søren Meisner

Dance Performance

Recoil Performance Group, Spring 2009

An interactive video scenography for a Recoil Performance Group dance performance/installation. Developed with choreographer Tina Tarpgaard and programmer Jonas Jongejan.

Time Map is a dance performance that is sampled, manipulated and reconstructed, as if you where in a film set and part of a live editing process.
In this time displaced universe 3 people meet. Ottilia 1886, Rose 2008, Keem 2258 – each of them seeking to find justice.
The three dancers have worked from a base of true stories from past, present and future.
Being placed in past, present and future their stories are portrayed visually, physically and dramatically.
They meet 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 infrared motion tracking implemented in openFrameworks. All video and lights were cued from qLab using midi to Isadora through to a GrandMA node, our own custom OSC server, openGL renderer and scene and text editor. During the performance all text was typed live by the author Gritt Uldall on stage. The choreographer had control over some of the scenes from her own laptop. Some parts of the first act were filmed and edited on stage during second act for an epilogue shown in the lobby.

Credits

Dancers: Laura Lohi, Anna Pehrsson, Kasper Ravnhøj.
Light design: Michael Breiner and Søren Knud.
Music: Pelle Skovmand
Live writing and Dramatist: Gritt Uldall-Jessen
Live Film Editing: Charlotte Munch Bengtsen
Costumes: Mette Jehrbo
Visuals and Software Programming: Ole Kristensen and Jonas Jongejan
Choreography: Tina Tarpgaard

Performances

04 2009 Dansescenen, Dansehallerne, Copenhagen

Requirements

• 3 infrared cctv cameras (pal monocrome)
• 4 colour cctv cameras (pal colour)
• 2 colour ptz cctv cameras (Ernitech ICU)
• a 24×8 video matrix with ptz control and joystick control (Ernitech System 1000)
• 3 custom built mobile truss rear projection screens
• 3+4 Videoprojectors, min. 5.000 ansi lumens
• 16 x 12 m stage space covered with black dance vinyl.
• 4-5 meters vertical space, depending on projector and camera optics.
• a recent generation mac pro with 6 dvi outputs
• 3 recent generation macbook pros
• 2 recent generation mac minis
• 8×8 vga video matrix with serial control
• 3 Low-latency Imaging Source DFG/1394-1e video grabber with 3rd party Mac driver
• grandMA node
• qLab license
• Isadora license
• Final Cut Studio, Adobe Premiere or Avid license
• theatre lights, led and conventional
• props

10 min trailer

Video by Recoil Performance Group

Video of entire first act

Video by Recoil Performance Group

Video of entire second act

Video by Recoil Performance Group

Post performance video

Video by Recoil Performance Group

Video from the software programming

Video by Ole Kristensen and Jonas Jongejan

Photos

Links

Time Map # 3 at Recoil Performance Group

TimeMap # 3 at Dansescenen (in Danish)

Source Code

The source code is available at Google Code.
It’s messy, it’s the first time we did something in openFrameworks, but it’s there. Run at your own risk.
the apps compile on a Mac using Xcode. You also need open frameworks. While the code is full of all kinds of nice trickeries, the application itself is not of much use outside the scope of our performance. apart from a quite big space and a professional dance company, it works tightly together with custom hardware and third party apps such as Isadora and qlab – not even mentioning the lib dependencies…