On Slump Dance

The TMA production »SLUMP DANCE" expands the former revolutionary concept of Adolphe Appia, who was active at the Festspielhaus a hundred years ago, using modern technologies.

The performance installation developed as part of the test series A.P.P.I.A. LAB sees itself as a fragile journey through different human body movement cultures in the context of the history and present of the Hellerau festival area (Festspielhaus Hellerau). One can understand the project as a study on the perception of the physical body, in direct relation to dimensions of aural and visual space.

"Slump" can be understood among others as a "downturn" or "sharp fall".

At the beginning is turning: the children, the dervishes in folk dances ... This is followed by the encounter of people and machines, cool functionality meets emotion. In the third act the awakening of the body, to become alive and speaking of the bodies. At the end a memory to ballet, dance on points and the (im)possibility of a happy ending.

For the first time in the Festspielhaus speakers with natural sound propagation (natural sound transducers (Naturschallwandler)) are used for the sound reproduction.

Credits

Idea, conception, production direction: Klaus Nicolai;
interactive systems: Frieder Weiss;
visuals and sound/light environment: DS-X.org
choreographic realization and coordination: Valentina Cabro;

dancer: Anna Till, Cindy Hammer, Irene Schröder, Johanna Roggan, Ka Dietze, Katja Erfurth, Liron Noah Dinovitz, Teresa Hackel;
costumes: Sarah Raphaela Hoemske

A production of the Trans-­Media-­Labororatory in cooperation with the TanzNetzDresden.

Used sounds & music:
Musik am Nil / Opera Proibita (Cecilia Bartoli und Les Musiciens du Louvre – Grenoble unter Leitung von Marc Minkowski) / Fragment aus „Ich bin dem Himmel nah“ (Amigos) / Produktion & Schnitt Geräuschmaterial: Klaus Nicolai, recording: Jo Siamon Salich
sound/light environment built with MAX/MSP, Max4Live and Ableton Live
granulation plugin is based on Granulator v1 by Robert Henke

Next ECAS festival : CYNETART Dresden 16.-26. 2011

CYNETART 2011 :: November 16.-26. :: Dresden :: Festspielhaus Hellerau

The 15th edition of the CYNETART festival for computer-based art is very much characterised by the essence of the Festspielhaus Hellerau that opened 100 years ago. Between November 16th and 26th 2011 the building designed by Heinrich Tessenow especially for the proclaimed “Body Liberation“ movement will be transformed into a space laboratory where cultural, artistic and academic as well as technological dimensions of contemporary and future body perception can be experienced. Visitors are invited to explore various experimental setups at the interface between naturalness and artificiality and thus to experience their corporeality in new and different ways.

The transdisciplinary symposium “Body Innovations“ will deal with cross connections between scientific, medical, media and cultural developments in conceptions, and in the re-construction of the human body. Hereby, the CYNETART festival 2011 ties in with Dresden’s tradition of innovation that reaches from the Festspielhaus Hellerau through the Dresden expressionist artist group “Die Brücke” and the “Glass Man” at the Deutsches Hygiene Museum to the laboratories of today’s research institutions.

It’a all about experience and perception of space & body & movement in relation to digital innovation. It’s about getting involved, creating and developing. It’s like to spend some time in an augmented world, somewhere between now and the future. A space, which is meant to be shaped by you.

Interactive Spheres:

During this year’s CYNETART festival, both the theoretical and the practical ECAS period one leading concept: Festival as Lab, will evolve into a next level, where it materialises itself as an actual physical experimental space. The general idea of Festival as Lab in the most consequent way. During more than a week Festspielhaus Hellerau will become a laboratory space, focused on various performances, workshops and presentations. It will involve the audience through out a fully immersive approach, where the human body is in the centre of attention. Space perception by movement combined with cutting-edge digital technology leads artists such as Anke Eckardt, who is the current ECAS artist in residence. Her installation BETWEEN I YOU I AND I ME explores ways how sound reinforced by specific visual effects shapes space and influences the body.

The ECAS winning commissions 2011 is the brand new project C.H.E.T. (Collective Hedonistic Environment Toolkit) by Intolight, a Dresden based creative agency. Following up first field-tests during a workshop at the FutureEverything festival, C.H.E.T.’s world premiere is the highlight concluding this year’s CYNETART edition. This interactive multi-user environment investigates collective creativity and creates an open platform to engage the audience to participate. Renowned and upcoming electronic music composers, like Jacob Korn, who runs the record label Uncanny Valley and who performs in venues such as Berghain (Berlin) or at Sonar Festival (Barcelona), will meet and collaborate. Moving your body to interactive deep electronic sounds could be the most intensive club night you ever experienced.

Immersive Projections:

Space is a crucial component of Recombinant Media Labs’ project CineChamber. The innovative, intermodal and mobile platform explores an architecturally staged “Gesamtkunstwerk”, where video meets light, and sound in a three-dimensional laboratory space. CynetArt is delighted to be able to show the premiere of new live modules by Andrey Kiritchenko and v4w.enko (Eugen Vashchenko) as well as Ulf Langheinrich. The presentation will be structured in three blocs and include compositions by renowned artists such as Ryoichi Kurokawa, Semiconductor, Fennesz & Lillevan, SIGNAL, Biosphere, Robert Henke & Tarik Barri among others.

What is the feeling to be inside of a projection? What happens when a video starts moving around in the space? There’s only one way to get the answer.

CineChamber is commissioned by featured partner festivals of the ECAS network project Networking Tomorrow’s Art for an Unknown Future CTM, TodaysArt, CIMATICS and Musikprotokoll.

Test Zone: Kazoosh! Based on projects created during a hands-on workshop using open-software. Kazoosh! are going to put the results on display. Self-made interactive environments can be quiet impressive!

World Premiere: A brand new ECAS commission by Kimchi & Chips, UK and Korea based artists, will shape and sculpture the sound by transforming it into site-specific, dynamic light-objects.

Collaborative Space: Further, various artists and collectives like Robert Wechsler, A.P.P.I.A. Lab, Klaus Nicolai will look into Body-Mind-Relations in a theoretical context as well as by presenting various artistic approaches, which connect dance performances with digital innovations.

Data Visualisation:

Vibrator is an interactive artwork created by Prokop Bartonicek. This data visualisation device incarnates the beauty of information streamings. The beauty in that case is beauty we perceive in the digital space. “The beauty of feelings, ideas and curves of bodies” as the artist describes it himself. With the idea of beauty there is the notion of pleasure coming along. An association that drives the expedition/research for digital definition of beauty to pornography. The Vibrator is connected to world’s busiest porn server, that stimulates its activity. A fully sensual experience.

Special Guest: We’re delighted to be able to announce the special guest of this year’s festival edition who is the A/V legend Ulf Langheinrich, a long-term collaborator of Kurt Hentschläger. Langheinrich is going to joint the CineChamber guard and compose a module together with Dresden based DS-X.org. Be there, when art-history will be written.

Meet & Greet: All artists will be present during the festival and happy to speak about their work and of course about the meaning of life, the sense of it all and other stuff as well incl. the weather!

Unique: As almost none of the art projects has been shown before and as most of them are works in progress CYNETART 2011 offers the first and exclusive possibility to discover and appreciate the artworks. Consequently it turns its venue, Festspielhaus Hellerau, into a literally living lab.

Be there, where it’s actually happening. 16.-26.11. 2011. Create and become a part of the creation.