Choreographing the extended agent : performance graphics for dance theater

The marriage of dance and interactive image has been a persistent dream over the past decades, but reality has fallen far short of potential for both technical and conceptual reasons. This thesis proposes a new approach to the problem and lays out the theoretical, technical and aesthetic framework for the innovative art form of digitally augmented human movement. I will use as example works a series of installations, digital projections and compositions each of which contains a choreographic component - either through collaboration with a choreographer directly or by the creation of artworks that automatically organize and understand purely virtual movement. These works lead up to two unprecedented collaborations with two of the greatest choreographers working today; new pieces that combine dance and interactive projected light using real-time motion capture live on stage. The existing field of"dance technology" is one with many problems. This is a domain with many practitioners, few techniques and almost no theory; a field that is generating "experimental" productions with every passing week, has literally hundreds of citable pieces and no canonical works; a field that is oddly disconnected from modern dance's history, pulled between the practical realities of the body and those of computer art, and has no influence on the prevailing digital art paradigms that it consumes.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Downie, Marc (Marc Norman), 1977-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tod Machover.

• Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33875
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33875

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33875