Cycle 2

For cycle 2, it was important to me to begin looking at the projection in the Barnett Theatre and with my dancers and understand what I was working on from the “performance” aspect of the RSVP cycle. Something I had noticed from previous dance performances in the Barnett Theatre, that because the theater is arranged in-the-round, a lot of top-down projection felt quite flat due to the close proximity of the audience. As a result, I wanted to focus on creating some more dimension in my projections. Much of what I have been designing has been video projection that is constantly moving.  

In cycle 1, I created a series of different scenes to try out in the Barnett and was able to discern that some of them did not read very well as a floor projection. I ended up staying with the projection that had a bit more of a “pinched effect.” Another difference in cycle 2 was moving away from depth sensors. Part of this was a resource issue—I was extremely limited on time. I was concerned that I would spend too much time finagling with the depth sensor and not enough on actually designing the projection that I am hoping to use for my MFA project in February. I was also limited by the amount of time I could spend working in the Barnett Theatre as it is a shared space within the dance dept. All of those factors led to me choosing to facilitate interaction through the use of a mouse watcher actor which has a similar effect as the depth sensor, but just without the use of a sensor that needed to be hung from the grid of the Barnett.  

I ended up designing a projection that could track the movements of my dancers in the space. Below is a video of that exploration.  

My dancers did share with me that the movement of the projection was a bit motion-sickness inducing for them as they are dancing and I heard similar feedback from audience members during our cycle 2 demonstration in class. That is one of my goals going forward, which is to adjust the speed at which everything is moving, so that it does not feel too overwhelming for both dancers and audiences. I’m discovering that there truly is a fine line in design. I am hoping that the projection and choreography read well together and that all design elements will coalesce into the world that I’m building. One of my biggest concerns is that audiences will only watch the projection and not any of the choreography. As all of these elements are being developed together, I know that I will have some more information by cycle 3 to know if I am overdesigning the video projection and thereby flattening the choreography or if the video projection does really help highlight some of the nuanced gestures and movements in the choreography.