ABOUT WORKING WITH TECHNOLOGIES:
" The movement to midi converter allows us to create a musical piece
on stage. Which is one of the things I wanted to do when we started
developing the device with Andy in 2001.
I wanted to be able to not only create a movement piece on stage
but a musical score at the same time. Make the 'picture audible'.
"Midi" is the name of the first piece I created using the 'Movement
to MIDI Converter'.
Andy and the company spent hours and hours in the studio and on the computer
Andy would program the device, birng it to us to show what it could do -
we would show him what we had worked on. We put the two together until
it did whatw e wanted it to do. Sometimes we chanegs the device,
sometimes the choreography. It was really a very rewarding and
interesting collaboration. And it has lead to 3 successful productions so far.
MIDI stands for communication and inevitably "Midi" is a dance piece about
communication and inter - personal relationships.
"MiDi" deals also with the
mingling of the human and the machine. We're not enemies.
"Midi" is a dance piece that is not only based on the device and what
it can do but it is an emotional piece.
Some of my pieces are created very intuitively. 'MiDi' was one of them.
'MiDi' directly reflects on mine and the other two dancers' lives, our
relationship to one another and our situation as a company at the time.
It deals with a constant struggle and moving on. An unstoppable
determination that sometimes leads to frustration, agression, confusion
and humor and it always goes back to everyones passion for what they do
and their very unique way of living.
'Why do we work with tehcnologies?'
Our lives are surrounded by new technologies. Incorporating those
technologies into art will allow for a bridge between us and them,
between art and science, between the artist and the scientist,
and between the dancer and the non dance audience.
We are interested in creating work that is not only dance for dance
audiences. We want to bring people to the theatre that would not think
of dance as something they can relate to. We want to change their mind.
We want to challenge them to sit and watch something they don't know what
to expect from. We can achieve that by offereing them something they can
relate to such as technologies.
It is fun: I have learned a lot about computers, music, lasers and the
world I live in since I started working on 'MiDi' with Andy in 2001.
It makes a big difference to actually use technology in a
creative way. Using technology and seeing it in this context will enable
us to gain a more profound understanding of it, our environment and of
ourselves. I did.
Also: Dance, to me, is not an old fashioned, clearly defined matter.
It can be anything and everything. I am interested in breaking
down barriers and rigid expectations of what dance, art, film
and life is all about. "Midi" reflects on the future
as well as the past. "MiDi" is about being human."MiDi" is personal
yet it is abstract.
The 'Movement to MIDI Converter' was also part of "Free Space 2002
- the distance between things" and 'Free Space 2003 - Fiboancci & Phi'.
The first was a collaboration with Duke University's Fitzpatrick
Center, department of Engineering.
For more info on The Distance Between Things, click here
The second 'Fibonacci & Phi' was a collaboration with the Wake
Forest University Department of Computer Science.
For more info on Fibonacci & Phi, click here
Those collaborations went into totally different technological realms than
what we had discovered so far: 'stuff' I didn't know anything about, fractals,
infrared cameras, 3-dimensional animation, linux clusters, parallel
computation, etc, etc..
It was very exciting to work with people I didn't know, on a project we didn't
know what it was going to be. I thought the outcome was amazing.
And both Free Space productions were extremely different from one another.
Both were very successful, and attracted people that had never thought of
going to see a dance performance.
I love working with technologies and scientists as I feel it opens up a
whole new world of expression, challenge and discovery to me!
To read about MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) go to:
http://midiworld.com/basics.htm
Science is driven by a human desire to achieve a certain goal, to gain insight
into a specific subject matter. Ther are different goals for different sciences,
Often there is just this curiosity about 'what we are capable of doing and
understanding'. It is the same with artists. We are driven by a need to
understand or explore our own nature and our environment.
This human, or emotional side behind the science is what I wanted
to isolate and underline in "The Distance Between Things".
There was a dosumentary made about our first Free Space collaboration.
We offer video shoings regularly. This video is part of our lecture demonstrations.
A streaming video from 'Fibonacci & Phi' is on-line at: http://www.wfu.edu/~ylwong/fibonacci-phi/
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