Technological and Computer-based Projects

Echo Gestures [working title]
proposed collaboration

With Chicago-based choreographer Kathleen McCann and costume designer Miodrag Guberinic, I plan to create a sound-performance environment in which music is tied so intimately to movement that as the theater is gradually brought into complete darkness, the continuing music will be "seen" as it is heard by the audience.

Inspired by "Roof of Thunder", a 2006 Chicago Public Radio/Third Coast Festival story documenting John Hull's gradual loss of vision. Born sighted but with a degenerative disease, he became totally blind in his mid-forties. At one point he describes hearing rain on the roof of a barn at some distance, and being able to "see" the shape of the barn through the sounds the rain makes as it hits the roof and falls to the ground.

The key to the piece will rely on specially-constructed costumes Guberinic and I are collaborating to design and build: infrared LEDs sewn into the palms, joints and torso will be picked up by a consumer video camera (most CCDs are sensitive to IR that lies outside the range of human vision) and motion-analyzed by a Jitter or OpenCV patch. The resulting data will control sounds in a Max/MSP environment, meaning that the dancer will literally be performing the music simply by dancing. Choreography and composition, then, become intertwined and overlapping in this piece, and my artistic process with McCann will need to take account of this. Repetition will need to be carefully structured, for example: taking care in rehearsal to make sure that musical phrases meant to be recurring are actually re-created by repeated dance motions.

This will start as a normally-lit piece, but from a minute or two in the stage lights will slowly, inexorably dim to twilight, past twilight, past seeing. Creating a completely lightless space will be a challenge (pesky fire-code-mandated "EXIT" signs, etc.) but this is an important part of our concept: audience members may need to be warned in advance, but they should be completely blind for much of the performance.

Our idea of a successful embodiment of this piece would be one where the piece could be clearly "seen" (heard) to be over, to the point where the audience would applaud, and only after that point would the lights come back up. Musically, dramatically, the project is in the brainstorming stages. Conceptually, though, we feel we are on strong footing and are excited to proceed.