Interview with Amin Weber (Frankfurt am Main, 26 March 2014) L: In the website of Deborah Hay s digital score is written that sets and cells compose the digital score. Can you explain to me that? A: Yes, the sets are chapters in which you can put into cells. L: Are the cells like frame, video, interviews, recording, and these kind of things? A: Yes, and the score with the marks made with PieceMaker attached with the dance paper score. Deborah Hay s score is attached to the video, so when you watch the video, you have the markers that mark when the dancer moves from one scene to the next one. You can clearly see what they do in two or three scenes. Then, the piece is quite fluent. We had a way of marking from the video. Therefore, there are cells, which can show the video that has data from PieceMaker, you can see in it the markers on the timeline. L: What do the markers mark? The gesture and the movement? A: Yes, exactly. L: I cannot see that in the video, is it right? They are just information that you need for the process A: Yes, they are meta-information, which are transmitted in the website, but it used to trigger the alignment of the pieces together. For Deborah Hay we used to film all the performances and put them together. For Jonathan and Matteo we just recorded frames, or we took one performance, one segment of a performance, and then their digital score works with this. In Deborah Hay there are several alignments, all the performers are aligned to each other in the timeline, therefore, when you look at the travel paths, you can see the alignment of 21 performances into one. L: I didn t understand, what is the alignment? A: We produced the markers to mark the changes of the scenes. We used the alignment to relate all the pieces together, because each performance was different. We could use the Deborah Hay s score as a plot line of all the performances. Therefore, everything is in Deborah Hay s score had to be in the performance. So that, we searched for scenes, and we asked to Deborah if there were kind of scenes which we could produce, or that we could see, or if there were scenes for her. Then, we looked at these scenes and we marked them with PieceMaker. We asked to Janine, Rose and Juliette if the timing was correct. 326
L: Ok, maybe I see. To summary: you had the video, with PieceMaker you marked the part in which you recognize the scenes have changed, and you added to that the part of the Deborah Hay s paper score. A: Yes, and also the travel paths L: Then, the alignment is about the markers. The alignment can be in each scores of each dancers, and between the three scores. I mean, for example, you can have alignments in Janine s solo score, and you can have an alignment that gets together the markers of Janine, Juliette and Rose s solos, is it right? A: Right, so you look at them when they make the scene and put them together L: And compering what they are doing A: Yes L: But actually wasn t there a shifting in the timings? A: Yes, of course there was, because they didn t start at the same time This visualization allows the people that don t know the dancer s scores to look at them in a different way. If you see more performances at once, you see more characters and patterns of a certain dancer. If you see one and then another one, it is really hard to grasp these characters of the performances. This is the reason because in the beginning we made an overlay of Deborah s performance, on her own score, in order to see if it could work. You need that kind of alignment. L: Therefore, we can say the structure of the digital score is these alignments. Did you use on that the software to produce the travel paths? A: No, the 3D dots are kind of base of the video-data. Because we had this two cameras that recorded, from the right and left side, every performances. The software, as the eyes, marked the distance between the two cameras. The software tracks the position. You have the fix position of the floor, the fix positions of the cameras, and the software can track the movement of a person in one camera, the same thing happens with the other camera, and with the difference between them the software finds out where the person is in the 3D space. The 3D paths are related in time and space into each video recording. L: So the 3D paths have nothing to do with the alignment, it is more an information, a data that you had filming with the software that automatically drawn the path A: Well, no automatically, because it had to be processed. It is a kind of extra information coming from the video. L: Therefore, the alignment is a work that you have done in post-production to visualize the choreographic score I mean, when it happened: the moment in which the scenes changed; the time and the space in the relation with the dancers, etc. Then, the 3D dots, otherwise, come from 327
data you had during the filming, and then you readapted creating the travel paths. I would say the travel paths are visualized in the set adaptation, more like a choreographic object. A: Yes, it s another view to look at the video, in general. I mean anyway the travel paths are aligned to the score and the video. There you can see travel path line, and this is not related to time in a way, because it can show all the movement a dancer made in half an hour or 15min. in one picture. Therefore, it is an extra information to understand what is happening on the stage. L: Did you use that data in your adaptation? A: No, I did not use that. L: Therefore, the digital score of Deborah Hay is made by the structure of alignments, which visualize the score content relating the solos in time and space. Then, we have the set of movement characters made by the 3D dots, and your adaptation. Do you think we could say that the alignment structure is more a way to analyze the solos made by the performers, it s more a scientific approach; and then the set movement characters and your adaptation are more choreographic objects, they are more artistic work. They are more deviations, because you took some information, something you perceived form the choreography and you created something new, a new way to visualize the knowledge is inside the choreography, in the Deborah Hay s score? A: Yes, yes. L: Now can you tell me about your adaptation? A: In the beginning I was thinking about to create something really abstract, really constructed in a way. I had the scene and I had the idea of what I could do to visualize or express it. I started these animations like scientifically, but after a while I thought it was not good, because it didn t represent what I saw and I thought about the piece, and what made fascination of Deborah s score. After sometimes I found out I needed some kind of body to really perform, but it had to be an invisible body, a body which could be towards apart, not a body representing my idea of the scene. It is made with 3D animation program. I used ragdoll system, it is like a puppet you have on strings. Basically, my body is something on strings with I can move arms and legs of it. I am puppet here in a way. Then you make the body disappears. I mean you don t see the body too often in the adaptation; you use this as tool to make the movement. The movement was the main quality, the main thing that fascinating me, and it needed to be showed in a way, over time and space. I made the scene, I made the movement of this doll, which I used as bases for the rest of visualization, which has always related with what I thought about the scene, or with what has represented, or with the movement was expressive. L: Did you have the interview with Janine because you used her solo adaptation to make the animation? I mean, has your digital adaptation been inspired by her life adaptation of the solo? A: Yes, she was the performer that more influenced me. Of course, you can see a lot of things in the video. However, you know, when you see a performance, the live performances have totally 328
different tensions that get suck you into that. I would made something that suck me into the scene or performance parts. It is a process that, probably, will never finish, because when now I look at the adaptation I feel still to can make it better. L: Yes, of course. I mean in these terms we can look at that as choreographic object, because when you are in choreographic process, when you create something, you feel to be always in this state that you can make more, you can do better, because it is a process of exploration that seems it has never end. A: Yes, the same is for this one. The first version was totally different compared the second one. The second was no fluent enough, some parts were too long, some other parts were too short, some parts I did not like anymore. With this adaptation, I was happy for a month (laugh). L: Which kind of technology did you use to make this adaptation? A: It is a program called Cinema 4D, it is 3D animation program. [ ] L: In the digital score of Jonathan and Matteo, there is the set of the scorebook, in which there are the pictures of Jonathan and Matteo s paper scores. How and how much did their scores influence the creative process of the digital score? I mean, we said that the Deborah Hay s paper score was really important for the creative process of her digital score. What did with Jonathan and Matteo s scores happen? A: It was the other way around. We had two scores, which are one of One Flute Note and the other of Cheap Lecture, which we have tried to write down. These are the only scores we were able to annotate. The others score, you can look at them, and they have totally different style of annotation. Jonathan writes in his own way and Matteo writes in a kind of musical terms. Most of them were not useful. Jonathan and Matteo know what there is in there, there are information that remind them what they have to do, but nobody else can understand it in a way. Of course, we wanted they explained us how the score works, but they basically said they could not explain how it works. For these two score One Flute Note, and Cheap Lecture is pretty clear because there are words and actions that have precise rhythms. This is what we did in the end of the project: we took recording and using PieceMaker technique to flip the page on the scores. L: Therefore, for One Flute Note and Cheap Lecture was the process as with Deborah s score, right? A: Right, because we thought it was nice see the score and the performance together. [ ] Jonathan and Matteo are kind of two musicians, they have these interactions and they have to be really carful about the timing. They do things that are really fast in a way, and they develop a kind of special energy in a certain point of the score, but they have really meet at some point. Therefore, they use very small, very limited repertoire in movement or symbols, and then they shift it around, so sometimes they use the counterpoint or the John Cage s patterns. However, the development of the score for them was that in the beginning we said oh yes, it s all about counterpoint. In the end, it was not like that. 329
L: Was for you clear what counterpoint is for them? A: Yes, kind of. We recorded parts of the performances that really focus on counterpoint and interactions. This is interesting but it is not all, it is not the only way in which they work. They go to the studio, they collect materials, then they kind improvise, and then they fix down in a range of possibilities, and then they take this parts and shaft them around in the way in which they like. Jonathan does the movement part, and it is really around all over the place, and Matteo is the one that puts things together, he is more composer in choreography, he makes the things structured. It is really a good way, the way in which they work together. L: For the filming, you had the cameras fixed in front and up, and you did not record all the performances but just some parts of them, many frames of each solo, is it right? A: Right, and single movements. For some performances, we filmed all of it, for others they basically choose what they would show. L: Why? A: Because they thought, it was interesting for us. Because for example if you take in consideration Cow Piece, there are something structured and some other things are totally unstructured. Therefore, for the recording we left out the totally un-structured parts, so we could focus on something else. L: Who decided the schedule of recording should be like that? A: The structured of the filming and the idea was work out by Jonathan, Matteo and Nik Haffner. They thought what could be interesting for the work, what could be interesting for the counterpoint, the structure etc. L: Therefore, can we say that the project of the digital score with them started with the aim to visualize the choreographic counterpoint, and in relation to that Nick, Jonathan and Matteo decided to schedule the filming like that? A: Yes, it was a proposal, on which we agreed on, because you cannot explain all the performances, but you can explain the structure of some parts of the performances, or show something that interesting there. Moreover, they choose the parts that they would show. L: Which kind of technology did you use to produce those digital score? A: We used the Kinect. With Deborah, we could not use it because the place was too big. With them, the idea to use the Kinect was possible because they are sat most of the time, and the tool is able to record the movement. We have 3D data for them too, but it is not appearing on the website yet. Now, Florian is working on these data to produce a kind of set. Now you have just the set with the animation. 330
L: The cartoons? Sorry, for me look like cartoons (laugh) A: It looks cartoony, but we had a lot of phases to look how it should develop it. Because first we ended up in that way, they kind en-suite the all characters of their performances. These animations are also really simple, very symbolic; you can use these as crude characters. It was technical decision, because we did not have the possibility to show something that moved that fast in the web, except these java script animations. L. Why? A: Because first we had all these movements. All the movements are marked and the animation works with this markers. Here you can see, Matteo is playing, and the animation is Jonathan. Each time Jonathan changed the movement was marked, and the animation changes in relation to the markers of Jonathan. L: Did you make together with Florian? A: Yes, together. We needed to do something simple and funny, to represent them performances L: Well, sure, it is incredible. It seems that these animations give the same humoristic impact of them way to perform. It is perfect, I think. A: We could not do others animations. There are totally different events. On the website you can watch an experiment we did in which the animation is connected with the markers made on a video took from YouTube. L: But this nothing have to do with Jonathan and Matteo? A: No, it is just to illustrate how it works the animation, on the developing of the animation. L: So using the same method to read both the digital scores Deborah s digital score and Jonathan&Matteo s digital score we can see that the set Meanwhile in Parallel Worlds is the choreographic object of Jonathan&Matteo s digital score. Does the recording of the pieces, marked with PieceMaker technology, make this? A: Yes, that is invisible L: Did you use the data from Kinect to produce these animations? A: No, we loved to do something with Kinect but we did not have time for that. Because you have to clean all the stage, you have to make small, in the way that it can run on the website. L: Which kind of software did you use to create this animation? 331
A: It is something that we really programmed by hand. The graphics are made by illustrators or some graphic programmed. It is a program that helps you to do the animations; you can edit it a lot. It is called Edge Animate and it is, basically, producing by java script. L: Did you draw these animations? A: Yes, we did it. I did a lot of 3D animations. We showed everything to Jonathan and Matteo and they really like them, but it was not possible use any thing, the thing more technical, like this. L: Therefore, we can say that this is the choreographic object of Jonathan&Matteo s digital score, the artistic work. I mean, the others sets are composed more by informations, or video, or pictures. Therefore, the other sets looks more like analytical or scientific data, compared this animation that looks as another way to visualize choreographic structures. For example, the set pattern and pulse is more analytical, is it right? A: Yes. It is a collection of explanations like a book. It explains the way in which they work. L: For them didn t you realize the alignments between frames and videos as you did with Deborah s work? A: No, we did not, because we did not need it. There was no difference between different performances. Performances should be always the same. The focus was not on how somebody is doing something, or how to show variations, with them, we showed structures. L: Ok, for me it is clear, I guess I have the structure of the process in my mind more or less. They are, in the end, choreographic digital objects. They look different because the choreographers, with which artworks you started to create on, are different. The choreographers have different poetics and the digital scores show up the relation of you, Florian and Amin, as artists, with these poetics. A: For me it was also really interesting the mechanic of the creative processes that each of these choreographers use. In each kind of art, there are some relationships in the creative processes. So maybe when somebody is doing painting he must use the same methods, to be creative. This is something really interesting. L: Yes, sure, for me it is also really interesting see how you and Florian related with them. Because you are artists and you have your own methods, and for sure, what happened is that in relation to what you had in front of you, you had to choose. Maybe the mechanic, your mechanic to analyze the process was the same that always you have, but, in the end, you had to change something to can fix in that choreographic poetics or better, it seems like that in a way. You, of course, created something new, that has changed the choreography or better the way in which the choreography is expressed but the choreography in turn influenced you, in the way in which you produced the choreographic digital objects. Right and proper Deborah wrote: even if the choreography changes the movement doesn t change. Therefore, you saw that when different performers play the same choreographic scores, you have different expressions of the same 332
choreography. The choreographic idea is still there, even if the choreography changes with the performer s art-making-process. For me, my impression is that you played in this creative process as a performer. For sure, the choreography changed because you used another language, you digitalized the choreography, but the idea is still there, you have been the medium as the performers actually are. You related with that language, and in relation to that, you created something new. It is the evolution of a thought in movement. 333