Location: Hungarian Palace of Arts (Müpa), Budapest
Client: Artus Contemporary Art Studio
Year: 2015, 2016
Generative imagery for the Laban Prize Award winner performance Drip Canon
This performance may seem like a single motion,
a single voice, a single image under continuous transformation.
- Gábor Goda
Concept
The concert: The wavelengths of a tuned, worn-out piano, a melting drop-shaped glacier, the dripping, the hissing steam combine with the flood of voices from a 17-member chorus.
The dance: The art of Tai Chi Chuan is a basic element of the performance’s choreography and its spirit as well. The pure, sharp confrontation and balance of rest and flow, qualities in opposition. The state of consciousness of a continuous presence in motion.
The imagery: since the performance is dealing with fine tuned movements from tai chi through dance to everyday movements, our goal was to develop a visual system which represents those concepts in a simplified, abstract way. We started to play with vectors, mathematical functions, noise, voronoi tessellations and fluid simulations to achieve fine, choreographed movements of interconnections and fragile web-like structures. Since water is a key element of the piece, we intended to achieve water-like effects: rain, vapour, surface tension and the like. It turned out that rain, and the underlying small particles can be turned into star-like constellations very easily.
Finally, we ended up with a generative abstract imagery, which resembles a lot from nature, at least from the behaviours and rules supporting its processes. 1D-4D is the name of a framework we developed during the process: it resembles one dimensional code (that we write) folding out into a four dimensional performance piece that deals with time, space and the choreography. All code has been written especially for the performance. We were using the free and open source tools Cinder, OpenFrameworks and Processing for the development process.
A 3D vector field that is representing fine movements within the choreography. Left: uniform movement, used for rain simulation, middle: increased noise, right: even more noise with increased particle lifetime
Visualizing sound fragments using voronoi tessellations and distance based particle connections
Aquarell-like fluid simulation for large scale calligraphy. Camera tracking with IR lights were used for spatial interaction.
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Performers & Creators: Tamás Bakó, Márton Debreczeni, Zoltán Mózes, Csilla Nagy, Melinda Virág
T’ai Chi Ch’uan Artists: Imre Baranyai, László Gregus, Szilvia Izsák
Musicians: Á la cARTe choir (artistic director: György Philipp)
Text: Heraclitus, Gábor Goda
Music Director & Conductor: György Philipp
Set and Visual Design: Ferenc Sebestény, Gábor Goda, Bea Gold
Costume Design: Kriszta Lőrincz
Lighting Design & Co-creator: Gábor Kocsis
Generative imagery, creative code: Gábor Papp, Ágoston Nagy
Video fx: Zoltán Kovács
Video Tech: Krisztián Megyeri (Kiégő Izzók)
Production Director: Anna Gáspár
Production Assistant: Anna Fazekas
Composers: György Philipp, László Melis
Director & Co-creator: Bea Gold
Director & Choreographer: Gábor Goda
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