projection on any handy blank surface

I was sent this link by an architect. Aside from getting the perspective just right (and it would only look perfect from one small vantage point), this is not all that hard to do.This particular instance is very well done.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/27/video-life-altering-3d-projection-splashed-on-german-building/#continued

Cris

IMPACT Jumping Together at the Pizza Party

More than 70 articipants came together at NYU in Pless Hall Lounge to meet each other and the IMPACT staff on Monday, July 20. Many had just arrived from other countries such as Korean, Denmark, and Taiwan. This is a lively group of people, creative, spirited and enthusiastic, bringing diverse backgrounds to a program that explores diversity, the arts, and technology. In the next three weeks these participants will learn a lot about the collaborative process and the use of technology to extend the expressive range of creating art.

Revised Visual Arts Workshop

A search for visual understanding

Through the process of collaboration students will explore the visual image in relation to sound, our own imaginations, and technology. By using our own imaginations and memories students will recall memories of sounds in nature or musical numbers that evokes a strong visual connection. Students will appropriate these memories and collaborate to create news works of art that evoke the spirit of these memories. 

By first using traditional means of painting students will work together to create large murals that are representative of the diverse imaginations and memories of students. Students will be asked to develop a theme around each of their pieces. 

Upon completion students will have the chance to appropriate these finished pieces using digital video technology. With this portion of the workshop students will collaborate to create a video piece that is an extension of the 2d piece, while still creating a new work of art with the video technology. 

By the end of the workshop students will: 

*Have experienced art making through means of collaboration

*Gain a stronger understanding of the visual image in relation to other forms of art and life

*Used the visual arts as a means of communicating ideas 

*Used technological means to create new works of art 

*Created art through means of dialogue with fellow students 

In addition a possible collaboration can be arranged between the music students and visual art students. Myself and Leo have discussed having the music students arrange a piece of music that will given to the visual art students to appropriate. The visual art students will create a visual image based off of this musical piece. The same can be done for the music students where the visual art students create an image and the music students appropriate this image. 

Consilience

Consilience means everything "jumping together" (all boundaries are blurred) There is a fine entry about consilience at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience

"Consilience, or the unity of knowledge (literally a "jumping together" of knowledge), has its roots in the ancient Greek concept of an intrinsic orderliness that governs our cosmos, inherently comprehensible by logical process, a vision at odds with mystical views in many cultures that surrounded the Hellenes. The rational view was recovered during the high Middle Ages, separated from theology during the Renaissance and found its apogee in the Age of Enlightenment. Then, with the rise of the modern sciences, the sense of unity gradually was lost in the increasing fragmentation and specialization of knowledge in the last two centuries." (Consilience)

In reading some of the participant responses to our survey some wrote about being All One, or Coming Together... the idea of consilience emerged as I read through their responses.

Edward O. Wilson's 1998 book Consilience is one of the great achievements in western literature for cultural and scientific criticism and analysis. It is an extraordinary book, especially for clarifying how the blurring of boundaries among disciplines has come about and placing it in a historical and cultural context. He argues that for the 21st century there are two ways of knowing the world (i.e., producing new knowledge) Science and the Arts.

Wilson is persuasive in showing how the arts produce knowledge and the significance of that knowledge for our continued growth and development.

If we are to make this a theme for the final production, we need to appropriate it in ways that show how technology has brought about arts collaboration and the creation of new work through the interpenetration of individual arts, and the cohesion of arts and sciences.

I CHING (The Book of Changes)

I CHING, the book of changes, postulates that "Change is Inevitable." I Ching observes that the only constant in the universe is change. I Ching helps anticipate change and provides a window into future actions. Its basis for discussion is the casting of sticks or coins that result in hexagrams that are beautifully descriptive of human conditions and states of being.

There are some thoughtful iterations of I Ching on the Internet such as I Ching Online. This is a wonderfully concise site that provides an excellent intoduction to I Ching:

I Ching Basics Fu Hsi (pronounced foo shee), the great Chinese sage to whom the I Ching system is attributed, constructed his answers in the form of sixty-four figures, the six linear lines stacked one above the other, either undivided, or divided, called kua. The top three lines and the bottom three lines of each of the kua are called trigrams. Following the law of eternal change, the lines are always in motion, always moving upward. As a new line enters from the bottom, it pushes the five lines above it upward, thereby displacing the line at the top. The movement is always in time to the rhythm of the universal heartbeat, always mirroring the universe itself. Taken together, the kua and their lines represent every conceivable condition in heaven and on earth with all their states of change. Each of the sixty-four kua, with their combined total of 384 lines, represents a situation or condition. Each situation or condition contains the six stages of its own evolution: About to come into being Beginning Expanding Approaching maximum potential Peaking Passing its peak and turning toward its opposite condition. The kua, therefore, not only represent every conceivable situation and condition possible, but also include all their states of change.( I Ching Online)

I Ching is extremely elegant in design and concept, but might be very difficult to truly implement as a theme, unless one simply applied the hexagrams almost as a score, the way John Cage did for a number of his works inspired by I Ching.

Thoughts on the Theatre workshop

Hello, all!

Here are a few ideas on the direction in which I think I'll take the Theatre Workshop. Feedback would be most welcome!

Theatre artist Robert Alexander, of Living Stage in Washington DC once stated that "Every human being is an artist and in the moment of creation, we are at our most sane, most healthy and most fulfilled. When we share a piece of our vision of the world with others, we are better able to see ourselves, to interact with others, and to make our own choices."

As a theatre artist, I am most interested in the ways in which Theatre intersects with our daily lives in both formal and informal ways, and am inspired by the endless potential narratives that come out of the interactions that we have, both small and large, significant or mundane. At every point in our day, we may choose to be participants or observers in an ever changing and growing improvisation. While it is entirely possible to passively participate within our everyday surroundings, we can also use these random interactions to create connections with our surroundings and the individuals with whom we share that space.

The IMPACT Theatre Workshop will encourage participants to find meaningful ways of interacting with both their environment and each other. Using the workshop model developed by Michael Rohd of the Hope Is Vital Theatre Company, participants will develop both personal and collaborative narrative threads that explore the now. Through exploration of the voice, body and imagination, Theatre Workshop participants will

*create safe spaces in which all artists can work
*engage in meaningful dialogue
*explore choice and consequence of action
*take risks
*take action to be the protagonist in one's own life
*utilize the multiple perspectives that different individuals bring to the collaborative work

At the end of the workshop, participants will have begun the development of an original piece that incorporates the work and perspectives gained from across the various IMPACT workshops.

IMPACT Extends a Digital Tradition

In 1996, NYU participated in one of the earliest collaborative exchanges on the Internet, connecting via the older modem connections three sites: a group of actors from NYU, a group of dancers at Fraser University in Vancouver, and a group of musicians at a loft in Greenwich Village. The major sponsors of the event were the composer Dr. Dinu Ghezzo, composer Dr. John Gilbert, theatre dramaturg, Dr. Alistair Martin-Smith, choreographer dancer Lisa Naugle who has since completed her doctorate and is now Chair of the Dance Department at UCI, and Pierre DeKarangal, web artist and theorist, who also has since completed his doctoral study.

The groups improvised materials for each other to respond to based on the figure Cassandra, which we treated as the precursor of women in our contemporary culture. This issue continues to be urgent and perhaps even more relevant today with the oppression of women in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world and the violent suppression of freedom taking place in Iran.

We posted brief 30 -45 second improvisations which each group reacted to and posted their own responses. The collaboration was asynchronous, but encapsulated within a two hour period, so each response was posted as soon as improvised, and over the period we built up a wealth of materials. These materials (music, acting, and dancing) formed the basis of a live multimedia performance in Loewe Theatre, Spring, 1997.

Cassandra continued to be the inspiration for many of our productions over the years. What emerged from these productions was the spirit of improvisation, spontaneity, and the creation of new work through collaboration of new work using technology and the arts in a multimedia environment.

Three years ago, IMPACT emerged as an extension of this work, aimed primarily at international students during the summer and now opening to include students at college level who are ready to explore technology and how it can serve to extend and amplify their artistic expressive range.

I started playing with the design of a website that would bring together more than a decade of work in multimedia creative collaborative productions. One problem with art on the Internet and as digital material is that it can be somewhat ephemeral and elusive. The objects of the productions are subject to be relegated to anonymous archives that either no one knows about or remembers to visit. That is often because the artists move on to new creative challenges that continue to extend the techniques of collaborative interaction and invention. When one is always in the moment, history somehow seems...well you know...dated....archaic.

Here is what I have so far: IMPACT: Breaking Boundaries

Updated Visual Arts Workshop

Here you will find an updated version of the visual arts workshop:

I have been considering approaching the visual arts workshop from a cognitive development standpoint. One of the themes of the workshop is visual understanding through technology and through images in our imagination and memory.

I thought leo's idea for associating images with sound was a great idea to help students draw relationships between the visual and musical. Having students recall individual sounds or musical pieces that are important to them can be a great way for students to understand how we as humans associate images with music or sound and how images assists with out understanding of the world around us. Since IMPACT is a multidisciplinary platform where sound and image are interwoven I think it would be helpful to explore how the two relate.

To explore these themes I would have the class break up into smaller groups. Individuals in these groups will collaborate on smaller group projects. The groups will be asked to recall sounds or musical pieces that are significant to them from their memory, sounds that have a strong visual connection. The groups will be asked to develop a theme based off of the sounds they remember. After the groups initial disscussion they will form images based off of the sounds they remember and paint these images on large format paper. These larger images will be based on the themes they develop.

After each group has developed a painting with a theme the students will be asked to exchange projects . One group will be given anothers theme or painting etc. The groups will be asked to develop a video piece around the theme or painting they have been given. This portion of the workshop emphasis's the theme of visual understanding through technological means via digital video camera's.

None of this is set in stone yet so I am open for suggestions.

The Meeting of East and West a la Pirsig

Michael Novak in his book The Experience of Nothingness anticipated our new networking of consciousness more than 25 years ago, long before the Internet and the new technologies: "The new consciousness has technology at its foundation. It places technology in the context of, and at the service of, human consciousness." (Novak, The Experience of Nothingness.) 

We are at work on the technology of ourselves, if we mean by technology, the extension of human consciousness. As we witness the unfolding of new technologies, they often are associated with a de-materializing of of the artwork and the artistic process. The "materials" are held in an electronic "consciousness" ready to respond to our summons. Notice how technology has also shrunk our perception of the world, and in some ways perhaps tended to homogenize cultures into a world culture. 

Robert M. Pirsig in Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance focuses the problem of the meeting of East and West in a new context, of an industrialized Western World intersecting with the metaphysics of Eastern modalities, of a different knowing of reality: "The real cycle you're working on is the cycle called 'yourself.'" "The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon." 

The motorcycle is a metaphor for Western industrialized culture and technology encountering a process of deep knowing and involvement emanating from the East. Within his quest for excellence and quality, Pirsig confronts the demons of himself, and helps us share in his personal, inner "Chautauqua." Chautauquas were tent shows which once "moved across America...in an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer." Now you are calling yourself to your own Chautauqua...your own quest (questioning)... ...your own discovering in the workshop of yourself.

tuesday demo idea - let's collaborate!

just as a thought, I have my own cello solo piece that I might want to perform for the Tues. demo performance, and I think it would be awesome if there were dance, lighting, and perhaps even imagery that went along with the piece. 

Would anyone want to collaborate with me on this?

I can send you the music soon, once I figure out how to do it... :) It's only about three minutes long.

Leo

Music Improv Workshop Description - Leo seeks help :)

Hi everybody! I'm sorry I have been absent in responding to your insightful posts! 

I am currently working on my workshop description and plans. Here's what I have as the description so far. 

Can you please give me some feedback? I will really appreciate it, Thanks!!!

The workshop plan is coming soon!

(This is a rough draft)

(By the way, I also seek help in sentence structures as well...)

For centuries, composers have been manipulating different patterns of pitches, rhythmic figures, and harmonies in efforts to transmit and portray different ideas and emotions, to communicate different thoughts. In this workshop, however, we will explore the more basic element of music, the sound itself. We will examine how tone quality itself can communicate different ideas. For example, the same music played on different instruments can produce different impressions to the listeners.

We will study how we associate different sound qualities to different aspects of our daily lives, and by using what we learn, we can aim to create imagery by our sounds and collaborate better with the actual visual imagery provided by the dancers and the artists.

 

We will also study the executions of those sounds. First we need to explore our instruments deeply. What different sounds can our instruments produce, by both traditional, and non-traditional usage of the instruments? Perhaps we can come up with our own unique approach to the instruments. We can also take an advantage of various sound technologies we have available here at IMPACT to further create unique sounds.

 

Lastly, we will study how to create these imageries as a group. If everybody did their own thing without any regards to the others, the resulting “music” will provide no other image but of “chaos”. We will study the ensemble of improvisation - how we create rules in a free environment to provide unity. We will explore different roles each musicians will have in an ensemble, and how to switch our roles in mid-music without the usage of any verbal communications.

 

The workshop will include listening to some examples, in-class discussions, and in-class improv sessions.

Butterfly Effect

As I read some of our postings, it occurs to me that in some ways The Butterfly Effect applies to all of our issues... it has implications for the environment, the relationship of cause and effect, how we and everything in the world are all connected, and how the slightest distraction might become a major source for transformation or cataclysmic diversion.

In the film Havana, Robert Redford, a gambler well-versed in the odds, explains to a companion, "A butterfly can flutter its wings over a flower in China and cause a hurricane in the Caribbean. They can even calculate the odds."

About a year ago Peter Dizikes explored the implications of the Butterfly Effect in popular culture:

The butterfly effect is a deceptively simple insight extracted from a complex modern field. As a low-profile assistant professor in MIT's department of meteorology in 1961, Lorenz created an early computer program to simulate weather. One day he changed one of a dozen numbers representing atmospheric conditions, from .506127 to .506. That tiny alteration utterly transformed his long-term forecast, a point Lorenz amplified in his 1972 paper, "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?"

In the paper, Lorenz claimed the large effects of tiny atmospheric events pose both a practical problem, by limiting long-term weather forecasts, and a philosophical one, by preventing us from isolating specific causes of later conditions. The "innumerable" interconnections of nature, Lorenz noted, mean a butterfly's flap could cause a tornado - or, for all we know, could prevent one. Similarly, should we make even a tiny alteration to nature, "we shall never know what would have happened if we had not disturbed it," since subsequent changes are too complex and entangled to restore a previous state.

So a principal lesson of the butterfly effect is the opposite of Redford's line: It is extremely hard to calculate such things with certainty. There are many butterflies out there. A tornado in Texas could be caused by a butterfly in Brazil, Bali, or Budapest. Realistically, we can't know. "It's impossible for humans to measure everything infinitely accurately," says Robert Devaney, a mathematics professor at Boston University. "And if you're off at all, the behavior of the solution could be completely off." When small imprecisions matter greatly, the world is radically unpredictable. (Peter Dizikes http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/06/08/the_meaning_of_the_butterfly/?page=full)

The Butterfly Effect might capture the imagination for excursions in a variety, perhaps infinite, directions.

Painting in Real Time

In several of our multimedia performances, we have had artists actually paint what is going on in a mural or totem pole style... we videotaped the painting as it was actually happening and incorporated those images as part of the live perofrmance and then used them as a record of the performance event.

LASER TAGGING

Here is another example of using technology to explore movement and the immediacy of being in the moment. This piece of technology uses projection and laser pointers to create projected designs. 

 Follow the link below: 

http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=76#video 

Terping

http://www.terping.com/whatisterp.html

So- this is pretty much what we were talking about...but with different equipment, right? But the concept of interaction and immediacy is the same. With performers, and not laymen- it might be brilliant...

paint and movement

Nick, what do you think about some kind of collaboration involving movement and paint? I'm thinking that it would be nice to investigate "being in the moment" with paint on the body and movement...with some type of paper, or canvas to "catch the action." Then, address the result with investigation and from a more reactionary, cognitive place- see where the project could alter/grow/change from there....

thoughts?

Visual Arts Workshop

These are some potential ideas I am working on for the visual arts workshop. 

Engage students in discussion about distractions in terms of visual imagery. Ex) Television, cinema, advertisements, etc. 

How do these visual images distract us? How are they designed to distract us? 

What kind of messages are being delivered to us through these images? Are these messages potentially negative or positive? 

How are camera's used as a means of communication? Explore ways in which the digital video camera can be used to deliver a message. Explore methods that are used to change, manipulate, or grow the messages being delivered in the images. 

Students will potentially create visual works through digital means that deliver messages that are potentially tied to their identity, or culture. 

Audio Workshop: lesson plan-in-progress

Introduction

- ask about everyone's experience and interest in audio; what do they want from the workshop?

Introduction to Basics of Digital Audio

- how microphones work, transduction, and how computers represent sound as numbers

Why Go Digital?

- advantages and disadvantages of digital sound, with practical applications demonstrated through Audacity and Max/MSP

Introduction to MIDI

- MIDI basics; how it works and why we use it

Introduction to Alternative Controllers

- Using the Wii, gesture, video, etc. to control and generate audio; focus on real-time performance setting and creative use of controllers during performance

- Max/MSP tutorial

Audio-Video Interactivity

- creating and controlling video with audio, and vice-versa; focus on practical applications in real-time performance setting

- Animata tutorial?

***

That's a bare sketch for now.  Any suggestions/thoughts welcomed!

thoughts on the theme

Hi everyone, I was thinking about "distraction", and "the medium is the message." After reading Cris' post on communications, it struck me: why not "CONNECTEDNESS"? The mediums we work in today tend to be evaluated in terms of how they connect us to each (like the webcam video conference yesterday -- pretty amazing!) and how they disconnect us (also like the webcam video conference yesterday, when we got those weird sci-fi-looking compression errors).  Cellphones connect and disconnect us, so do our personal computers, social networking... and distraction is one way it disconnects (and maybe connects, too?) What does everyone think?

I'd also argue that IMPACT is all about connectedness -- because it is a multimedia workshop that celebrates our specialties and differences by bringing us all together for a chance to make art and to learn.  The final performance is the very embodiment of how our mediums/messages can powerfully connect us through art, despite different interests, which side of the ocean we came from, whether we dance or program computers or sing...

workshop ideas...

Potential dance workshop ideas

- Have the students brainstorm different ideas with full technological options at there disposal, (thinking that that was the goal) then switch the aim and ask, what is it that they are trying to evoke, and how could that be done with out anything other than their bodies? The result would be utilizing technology ONLY when necessary....

-Exploring living in the Now. Feeling comfortable with improv, with out distractions. This is the piniacle of being present. If one becomes distracted, the improvisation suffers. Utilizing Pilobolus warm up technique, general dance terms (engaging the full body, heightened awareness of surroundings, accute availability to interact and add on), and some structure, we'd explore this concept and see how set choreo could organically evolve from this state.

The messenger is the medium?

Expanding on thoughts from today's meeting.

To twist a phrase, and taking "medium" in its definition of "a go between", perhaps the messenger - in this case cellphones, crackberries, netbooks, etc - is the ultimate arbitrator of our communications. The medium (electronic) is most certainly part of the message, but the device being used necessarily changes the meaning of the message. Maybe.

Also, perhaps there are good sides to the constant electronic ecology - I like this video (PG-13).

Drew and Kenji's Film

Kenji responded to the idea of "Distractions" which was suggested by a comment from Nick. Here is the Short Film Kenji cited. Just a word to all of us.... put things in the Blog so they are immediately part of the Blog so we can experience the work without leaving the Blog.

Bronx Space

Greetings, Creative Colleagues!

Below is the link for The American Banknote Building that I was talking about. If it's of interest, I'll move forward with my contacts!

http://www.thebanknotenyc.com

Getting Started

This Blog is one of the ways we are exploring collaboration... it is itself a collaborative technology. It is great to read comments on entries, and perhaps you will generate new entries that invite comments that propel this multilogue along the paths of themes and ideas. There is no particular destination... just the voyage and stimulating (more than simulating) thought... as thoughts collide they create parallel universes and possibilities...

In Search of a Theme

A theme or concept has served as a starting point for the IMPACT teams of the past two years and helped participants develop their creative ideas in the context of a unifying idea. In the first year, we used the book Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. Scenes were created based on the short stories that explored time and relativity. In the second year we used the concept 080808 since we were performing on August 8 and ending at 8.

We need something that is abstract enough to generate ideas and yet somehow currently relevant. What are some ideas that might inspire us to explore and create responses to world and cultural issues, or directions that might take us to some tipping point?

space...

Hi there! I wanted to find out more info about the spaces, as far as rigging....who do I contact? Thanks! Karen

IMPACT: The Medium is the Message

Half a century ago, Marshall McLuhan "electrified" the world through his observation that the medium itself was actually the message, shifting from content to process. This was a monumental shift for the western world, but in fact it has had an enormous global effect. McLuhan was one of the first cultural critics who recognized that the emerging media would literally turn the world into a village.

The Medium is the Message

The Medium is the Massage

Concurrent with the McLuhan's impact on the arts and technology was the emergence of an early multimedia artist, Alwin Niklolais. Nikolais was among the first true multimedia artists, creating multimedia theatre that transformed the human figure as a chameleon-like morphing creature experienced as abstractions, and provoked a new artistic dialogue about the human condition and the human frame.