Jordan Rickman
What unique artistic possibilities or properties might emerge when combining the movement forms of contemporary dance with the interactive installations and objects enabled by digital technology? Structure-Body: Truss I is an experiment exploring this new ground.
https://itp.jordan-rickman.net/thesis-itp/
Description
Structure-Body: Truss I is an interactive kinetic sculpture designed to be danced with in a performance setting. The sculpture is a large metal “truss” (a long structure of connected beams, like the arm of a crane or the side of a bridge) mounted on a rotating base. Using distance sensors and a motor, it responds to the movement and presence of bodies nearby, moving away when approached and following back when retreated from. Nine feet tall at its highest point and reaching down into the performance space to cross the dancer’s body at chest level, it forms an industrial structure which dancers must navigate, but which also acts as another body on stage, moving with and reacting to dancers’ movements, mechanical but seemingly alive.
Truss I is meant as a prototype, demonstration, and inspiration for further choreographic research. The boom in inexpensive hobby electronics and the online availability of technical know-how has enabled artists to build machines that can sense and respond to their environment. What can happen when these sorts of machines are incorporated into contemporary dance, a field of performance structured around space, form, movement, physical touch, and physical force – all things which today’s electronics can readily sense and manipulate? Truss I offers a jumping-off point for that discussion. It creates a simple dialogue between the movement of a dancer and the movement of a physical object, but even this simple interaction opens up infinite choreographic possibilities. Moreover, due to its large size and its placement at the level of the dancer’s torso, Truss I plays with space as well. It is not only visually imposing; it obstructs the dancer’s path and divides up the space around itself. How will dance change if the dance space can reconfigure itself continuously in reaction to the dancer’s actions?
Classes
Thesis
Presentation Video
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP2ohCYS-q6vjQRzUj2fEkg