With new hybrid performance comes new hybrid tools, as artists can work with an arsenal of evolving, often open, creative visual software. In a new performance for Australian Dance Theater, multiple tools merge to produce an array of visual features to accompany the choreography. Some of the glue is Syphon, the open source framework for sharing textures on the Mac, so it’s fitting this news comes our way from Syphon co-creator Tom Butterworth.
Tom writes:
I’ve just been doing some coding work for something I thought might make a good CDM story. It’s a new performance by Australian Dance Theatre, a dance/video piece called Proximity, with the video side done by Thomas Pachoud. Dancers film each other on stage and the live video ends up on three huge screens behind them, with various tricks of time and repetition applied.
Thomas is using VDMX, a lot of Quartz Composer and custom code with Syphon [and] OpenFrameworks.
My role in all this is tiny – I’m just quite excited about it as a fan of both video and dance.
Agreed! It’s nice to see the tradition of dance and technology carry on (see also: Troika Ranch, Merce Cunningham, many, many others…)
As reviewed in The Australian:
Dance on the spider’s web of technology
You can also hear audience reactions via Australian Dance Theatre’s Twitter
Behind-the-scenes interview at bottom; images here via the Australian Dance Theater Facebook page.
