The interactive installation If/Then Installed places visitors in the role of the dancer, inviting them to perform a series of movements. Participants imitate and virtually control video of dancer-choreographer Richard Siegal executing gestures derived from Yvonne Rainer’s piece Trio A.*
Participants’ movements are captured in real time. When a gesture is performed to the satisfaction of the installation’s tracking parameters, the user’s recorded image is displayed and replaces that of previous participants. It thus serves as a model for future users and also feeds an ever-evolving database of archived gestures.
The choreographic system is presented as a flowchart interface. With each new gesture, the user strengthens his dialogue with the avatar on screen, alternating between learning and controlling. Engaged in this interaction, participants have a chance to go beyond any perceived limitations, and to experiment with their physical and social selves.
The dynamic archive is displayed alongside the main installation: participants can feel their collaborative presence as part of the overall choreographic system, and also grasp the breadth of the physical variations generated when a single gesture is performed by many different people.
The project merges the collaborative digital choreographic process explored by The Bakery in If/Then Open Source (SACD/Monaco Dance Forum Prize 2006), with research using Gesture Follower software developed by IRCAM’s Real-Time Interactions Team. The installation was built and presented for the first time at ZKM in Karlsruhe in February, 2009 and has been acquired as part of the Museum’s permanent collection. Since that time, it has been shown at Muffatwerk in Munich and at the Admont Monastery exhibit Play Admont.
*Trio A was first performed in 1966 by Rainer, Steve Paxton and David Gordon at Judson Memorial Church, New York City. In 1968 it was performed as the first section of Rainer’s The Mind Is a Muscle.
The Bakery: Richard Siegal, Frédéric Bevilacqua, Florent Bérenger, Hillary Goidell, Jean-Philippe Lambert
Programming: Florent Bérenger, Jean-Philippe Lambert
Motion capture and programming: Frédéric Bevilacqua (Ircam)
Production: The Bakery (Paris-Berlin), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Ircam-Centre Pompidou (Paris), Muffatwerk (Munich), with support from CENTQUATRE (Paris).
Thanks to Fivos Maniatakos (Ircam), Thomas Pendzel, Incandescence.