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KLOF. cyberographies of folk

dance performance

PREMIERE 12-15.05.2022

* People and artificial intelligence enter into a (folk) dance dialogue *

DOCK 11 BERLIN

“Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.” ― Donna J. Haraway

Two dancing bodies on stage. One is a living machine of the human body. Another one is a virtual machine of technology.

Both were trained in folk dances.

One - five years in the academic dance institution, training every day in order to drill and perfect the movement skills. The other one is a machine learning algorithm that has been trained for several hours on folk dance samples recorded with motion tracking technology. Through millions of iterations on these recordings, this computer model learned to choreo(cybero)graph dozens of synthesised folk dances on its own.

Between these two dancing partners unfolds a dialogue, charged with traditions and potentialities, both open and specific, harmonising and contesting, mechanical and spiritual.

They search for an alliance that invites us to explore the ability of a body to build and rebuild itself in a perpetual act of unlearning automatic habits, making the other body move renewed, while abstracting their movement into an autonomous aesthetic field. Folk dances transmit the legacy of disciplining the bodies while framing them into representations of cultural identities. As we are acknowledging complexities and hybrid identities in our contemporary world, shouldn’t we rethink and hybridise the former “dances of the people” as well? The intersections between the digital and the analogue become especially intriguing when they are intertwined with the political and aesthetic potential of dance. Dance has always been a reflection on how society is organised and nowadays humans are increasingly extended by and merged with technology. Can artificial intelligence help us to de-hierarchize and reinvent these inherited bodily practices? What could be the kinaesthetic construction of the future world and who will be moving/running/choreographing/driving/leading whom?

Concept, artistic direction, choreography: Irina Demina Choreo(cybero)graphy: KLOF Co-choreography, dance: Viktória Kőhalmi Sound Design: Michelangelo Contini Machine Learning programming: Dávid Samu Computer animation: Yaron Maïm Stage design: Yue Ying Costume design: Justyna Gmitrzuk Light design & projection: Agustin de Olarte Dramaturgical support: Ana Letunić Production: Tammo Walter

Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Capital Cultural Fund) Research supported by Arbeits- und Recherchestipendium (research stipend) and Tanzpraxis scholarship by Senate Department for Culture and Europe Berlin.

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This research work made it possible to prepare for working on the full-scale real time multimedia dance performance “PERPETUAL MYTH”, that will premiere November 26-27-28.

Ticket/Streaming Links: Fri, 26.11.2021 | 08.00 pm dringeblieben.de/videos/perpetual-myth-2611 Sat, 27.11.2021 | 08.00 pm dringeblieben.de/videos/perpetual-myth-2711 Sun, 28.11.2021 | 08.00 pm dringeblieben.de/videos/perpetual-myth-2811

The transdisciplinary performance explores the potentials of a dialogue between conventional and digitally stimulated choreographies through a mutual permeation of folklore dances and the virtual realm. This experiment of live streaming motion captured dance combines the folk traditions of circle dances with digital technologies, embracing the plausibility of fluidity, fantasy and playfulness in creating choreographies of present, past, future, as well as virtual, timeless and imaginary situations. A mesmerizing pattern of moving images invites us to reflect on structuring blueprints of togetherness, on distance and proximity, and to expand the understanding of the body. A liminal space opens up, where folk traditions, spirits, legends, identities and histories transform into digital data points – and which invites us to reconsider the relationship between ideologies and aesthetics.

Concept, choreography, dance: Irina Demina Digital media and interaction design: Arístides García Dramaturgical support: Ana Letunić Sound composition: Felicity Mangan Visual programming: Dávid Samu Light & technical support: Agustín de Olarte Costume: Justyna Gmitrzuk Production management: Tammo Walter

Project “Perpetual Myth” is supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Research supported by DIS-TANZ-SOLO (funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media in the NEUSTART KULTUR program, aid program DIS-TANZEN of the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland) and by Tanzpraxis Scholarship Berlin.

Thanks to DOCK ART.

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Concept, choreography, dance: Irina Demina Digital media and interaction design: Arístides García Sound composition: Felicity Mangan

#digitaldance #tanz #dance #danceinberlin

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This research made me reflect a lot on the nature of digital “stages”, as a relatively new phenomenon in our post-pandemic world, and I see lots of unexplored possibilities and potential (and accompanying dangers) of digital or hybrid formats for dance productions.  There are the dangers of the Internet reality that we have to be aware and mindful of: unequal access to technology, digital divide across geographies, generations, communities, cultures, social isolation, data protection etc. But at the same time I am constantly asking myself: how can we use technology in a way that is uplifting, inspiring and empowering, and that (paradoxically) can make us get closer to the nature of our true selves? How can we use technology in such a way that it allows us to create new ways of proximity, knowledge-sharing, togetherness and inclusiveness? I believe, that virtual realms have a lot of potential to be explored in relation to performing arts practices. And I think, that these alternative formats, that the pandemic forced us to develop and explore, actually showed the neglected “gaps” in the art scene. Digital and virtual stages are potentially inclusive places: for some people for various reasons, before and after the pandemic, it is not possible to attend a physical theatre space and participate in physical events. Developing virtual formats, in addition to the existing “traditional” formats in performing arts, seems to be a promising way towards more inclusive and sustainable future, constantly bearing in mind that technology use should be a right, and not a privilege.

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"The goal of the theatre is to provoke accidents. Theatre should be based on what has been called “errors”: ephemeral accidents. In accepting its ephemeral character, theatre will discover what distinguishes it from other arts and consequently opens it to its own core. Other arts leave written pages, recordings, canvas, volumes: objective traces that time erases very slowly. Theatre itself should not last even a day in the life of a man. Just born, it should immediately die. The only traces it will leave will be carved into the interior of human beings and will manifest in psychological changes. If the objective of other arts is to create oeuvres, the goal of theatre is specifically to change man.” (Alejandro Jodorowsky)

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///  by “dematerializing” the art work we address new conceptions of identity and community, we contemplate notions of digital future, while shedding light on our collective present and past ///

#digitaldance #digitalart #motioncapturing #perpetualmyth

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experimenting with real time PHYGITAL choreographing of folkloric circle dances with digital media and interaction designer Arístides García  

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stills from a rehearsal combining folk dance vocabulary with real time motion captured generative design by Aristides Garcia. 

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some impressions from our technological and visual research of motion capturing possibilities  for live streaming and real-time video synthesis and programming real-time motion graphics with programmer David Samu

#dance #digitaldance #perpetualmyth #klof #danceinberlin

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This experimentation of live streaming motion captured dance combines the folk traditions with digital technologies, embracing the plausibility of fluidity, fantasy and playfulness in creating choreographies of present, past, future, as well as virtual, timeless and imaginary situations.  A liminal space opens up, where folk traditions, spirits, legends, identities and histories transform into digital data points

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…to make visible invisible… ... to make invisible visible... ... to push the limits of corporeal materiality and reconsider how we might (re)define the body as we have always known it. “Skin is a container. It is a peel that contains and cradles wildness. It gives shape to bodies. A break, tear, rupture, or cut in skin opens a portal and passageway. Skin is both open and close. The digital skin – the screens through which we embrace range, politic via play, and toy with different modes of representation – remains a necessary  precondition of a digital avatar. Avatars can  become rhetorical bodies, ones that challenge how and why we perform our abstract and varied selves toward the goal of becoming our truer selves, both on- and offline.…embracing the plausibility of range – that  is, fantasizing, playing, experimenting by donning different “skins” – becomes an act of empowerment, self-discovery, and even   self-care.” (”Glitch Feminism” Legacy Russell)

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Multiple internets and alternate realities are like a quantum universe with unlimited variations of “realities”. Driven by curiosity for images and abstract imagination we are experimenting with various technologies, glitch compositions and their narratives for creating choreographies of present, virtual and imaginary situations. 

#digitaldance #dance

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testing different modes of motion capturing for live streaming

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Our research goes into its second research phase “KLOF_2″  thanks to the support of  DIS-TANZ-SOLO programme (funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media in the NEUSTART KULTUR program, aid program DIS-TANZEN of the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland).

#tobecontinued

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KLOF / explained / (first prototype) (*“klof” is for “folk” <dance> spelled backwards)

What happens if we teach a virtual model to improvise on the basis of folk dances? Can machine be a choreographer? In this video we present the creation flow of the first “KLOF” prototype, explaining each stage step by step. Very excited to preset it to the world after several months of experimentation and development!

#dance #digitaldance #machine learning #tanzpraxisberlin #takecare #virtualmodel #digitalchoreography

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