Project

Year

Fields

In 2017 we had the chance to work in an interdisciplinary team on interactive visuals for a dance production. We worked together tightly with the dancers, directors, and musicians over a two-week span. Through workshops, brainstorming sessions and of course dancing, we developed ideas for the final installations included in the play. As the main theme of the production is climate change we decided to work with metaphorical traces we leave behind.
We used a Kinect to track the dancers' movement from above and project a trace of light behind them wherever they step. The visuals were included right in the middle of the piece while it was shown at the Rote Fabrik in Zürich.

Dancers performing with the installation traces of light following them
Figure_01 - Dancers performing with the installation
People walking around inside the installation
Figure_02 - People walking around inside the installation

Due to the short timeframe, the project had to be realised in we had to work around a few technical limitations with the Kinect and projector. However, it provided an interesting challenge in figuring out how to get the Kinect close enough to the floor for it to be able to project the dot matrix on the floor. Another challenge was to find a projector with the power to show the visuals in full fidelity. Going through the process of making the visuals they used to be quite a bit more detailed but realising the technical limitations we had to change course and redesign our visuals to fit the hardware constraints. Through this process, I feel the visuals have improved drastically as they became more clear for a first-time audience. And the framerate improvements were, of course, nice as well.