Mortal Engine 

(2008) 

produced by well known australian dance company Chunky Move. Director: Gideon, Interactive System Designer: Frieder Weiss, Laser performance: Robin Fox, Composer: Ben Frost.

Mortal Engine is a dance-video-music-laser performance using movement and sound responsive projections to portray an ever-shifting, shimmering world in which the limits of the human body are an illusion. Crackling light and staining shadows represent the most perfect or sinister of souls. Kinetic energy fluidly metamorphoses from the human figure into light image, into sound and back again. Choreography is focused on movement of unformed beings in an unfamiliar landscape searching to connect and evolve in a constant state of becoming. Veering between moments of exquisite cosmological perfection and grotesque evolutionary accidents of existence, we are driven forward by the reality of permanent change.

 

Source: Chunky Move

 

 

The choreographer Gideon Obarzanek and his technical team have created a seductive, intriguing piece of entertainment in Mortal Engine. The title reflects the dancers’ role in igniting the technology to project a sound and light show; the way they move, which can vary in each performance, triggers what the audience sees and hears.
The laser designs are bold and beautiful – especially the concluding sequence that brings viewers into the vortex of its tunnel of underwater green that changes shape from swirling clouds to walls of light that a dancer can put a hand through.
Robin Fox is the laser and sound artist, and Frieder Weiss designed the interactive system.

There are no pre-recorded video, light or laser images, and sounds are generated from movement data, or, in some cases, phrases already composed by Ben Frost. These phrases are triggered by the dance action or by an operator responding to where the dancers are positioned.
The lasers cover the broad Drama Theatre stage with swirls and squares that grow, shrink and tumble with hypnotic rapidity or stretch out like three-dimensional architectural projections. There are also more intimate lighting effects that surround the shape of one or a group of performers – these are the ones that remind us that, although the process is so fascinating and the visuals so engaging, Mortal Engine does have meaningful themes.

The dancers perform on a steeply ranked white square that can be divided and lifted to act as a wall. Mostly their action is floor-based, which allows them to be picked out in white light or shadowed in black. This sets up contrasts that can become conflicts, giving tension to solos in which strong body language suggests inner turmoil and duets that illustrate the give and take of relationships or, in one case, the darker self in the form of a hooded figure.

 

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

 

 

Mortal Engine, choreography, laser, dance, Live Visuals, Interactive

Reading

Expanded Cinema (1970) - In a brilliant and far-ranging study, Gene Youngblood traces the evolution of cinematic language to the end of fiction, drama, and realism. New technological extensions of the medium have become necessary. Thus he concentrates on the advanced image-making technologies of computer films, television experiments, laser movies, and multiple-projection environments. Outstanding works in each field are analyzed in detail. Methods of production are meticulously described, including interviews with artists and technologists. (John Coulthart)

The Art of Projectionism (2007) by Frederick Baker (in German) sets out the principles behind his use of projectors in the film making process. He defines a projectionist school of filmmaking and media art. In this publication he also presented Ambient film, a surround experience that can be shown in specially developed cinemas. (Wikipedia)

 

SEE ALSO

Antonin De Bemels (*1975) discovered video art and experimental cinema at Ecole de Recherche Graphique, from 1993 to 1997. His main areas of interest are movement and the human body, and the dynamic relationship between sounds and images. Since 1997, he has made more than 15 short videos that were screened all around the world. He also creates video backgrounds and soundtracks for contemporary dance pieces, and occasionally performs as a VJ. (Videomedeja)

Synchronous Objects (2009) is an interactive exploration of choreographer William Forsythe's One Flat Thing, reproduced. It is the result of a collaboration between The Forsythe Company, based in Germany, and researchers at The Ohio State University from design, dance, computer science, geography, statistics and architecture who work together at OSU's Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD). (Synchronous Objects)

Richard Wagner: Siegfried (2008) - In the world of opera, La Fura dels Baus has defined its personal style through its exploitation of large-screen projections, the extraordinary mobility of the performers, and the magical use of human beings to create organic structures that evoke objects such as Valhalla (in this Der Ring des Nibelungen production). Indeed, La Fura dels Baus was predestined for Richard Wagner's visionary world: his dream of a Gesamtkunstwerk becomes reality as a shape-shifting sequence of tableaux unfolds before our eyes with all the elements that constitute the lenguaje furero or Fura idiom. (Unitel Classica)

psychic communication 2 (2009) by Turkish drummer, producer and visual artist Volkan Ergen. He calls psychic communication 2 a "fantasia". (Volkan Ergen)

© Center for Visual Music

 

Composition in Blue (1935) - original title: Komposition in Blau. Surfaces dominate in the abstract animated film Composition in Blue by Oskar Fischinger. Colorful geometric figures are set in rhythmic motion. The music from Otto Nicolai's The Merry Women of Windsor is impressively visualized through a blending of form and color. (William Moritz: "Oskar Fischinger", in: Deutsches Filmmuseum Frankfurt am Main, Optische Poesie. Oskar Fischinger Leben und Werk, Kinematograph Nr. 9, 1993, p. 42)