Concept/Design: Richard Siegal, Frédéric Bevilacqua, Florent Bérenger, Hillary Goidell
Programming: Florent Bérenger, Jean-Philippe Lambert
Motion capture and programming: Frédéric Bevilacqua, Fivos Maniatakos (Ircam)
Video: Thomas Pendzel
Graphics: Incandescence
Coproduction The Bakery, ZKM | Karlsruhe, ZKM | Institute for Visual Media, ZKM | Media Museum, Ircam-Centre Pompidou, with support from CENTQUATRE.
If/Then: Installed is an interactive installation that invites spectators to physically imitate and virtually control a video projection of dancer-choreographer Richard Siegal performing gestures from a choreographic system.
The project merges the collaborative choreographic process explored by The Bakery in If/Then Open Source (SACD/Monaco Dance Forum Prize 2006), and research developed by IRCAM (Real-Time Interactions Team). The installation was presented for the first time at ZKM in Karlsruhe in February, 2009.
The installation expands upon the methodology developed by Siegal for his performance If/Then (2005). Spectators play the role of the dancer, following a flowchart representing various movements and their interconnections. The spectator’s image is captured in real time and analyzed, replacing that of the model and thereby enriching an ever-evolving gestural database.
As spectators imitate each movement performed by the avatar, a dialog is established and the “learner” is soon able to control the avatar. A notational interface encourages spectators to experiment with a variety of gestures in the system, thereby exploring whole body movement and questioning the nature of contemporary dance.
BIOGRAPHIES
RICHARD SIEGAL
Richard Siegal is the founder of The Bakery (2002), an organization dedicated to the exploration and production of contemporary performance. Siegal danced with William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt from 1997 through its final season in 2004. During his tenure, he was named “Outstanding Dancer” by Balletanz’s Annual Critics’ Survey (1998, 2000, 2003). His own choreography was presented by Ballett Frankfurt, most recently in the 2002 trilogy, x(evening). In 2008, he received the prestigious Mouson Prize for his choreography Stranger/Stranger Report. The same year, he completed the Stranger trilogy with As If Stranger, created at Danspace Project in New York, where he received the New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award. Siegal was artist-in-residence at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany for the creation of If/Then Installed and his piece Homo Ludens. He is also member of the dance department and American Dance Festival where he is a vital part of the Forsythe Festival.
FRÉDÉRIC BEVILACQUA
Leader of the Real Time Musical Interactions team at IRCAM, the Paris-based Institute for Music/Acoustic Research and Coordination, Frédéric Bevilacqua has both a scientific and musical background. With a Masters in Physics (1991) and a PhD in Biomedical Optics at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (1998), he also studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston (1992-93) where he contributed to numerous artistic projects fusing music, theater and new media. From 1999 to 2004, he pursued research at Beckman Laser Institute of the University of California Irvine. Since 2003, he has led research on gestural capture and analysis at Ircam and is part of a research team working on new paradigms for technology and music performance, as well as the interaction between gesture and sounds/video processes.
FLORENT BÉRENGER
Florent Bérenger is is both musician and online developer. He collaborates with artists including Pierre Giner, with whom he created TalkSaver, a prototype for speech capture and real-time text transcription, for the 2005 Venice Biennale. As drummer for the group Playdoh, he has worked with Pierre Giner as well as video artist Marie Daubert on performances that immerse spectators on stage next to the musicians using video installations. Since 2008, he has shared his explorations with the interactive agency Visual-Link Paris, where he is production director.
HILLARY GOIDELL
Hillary Goidell has lived and worked in Paris since 1990, after receiving a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Anthropology from Amherst College. In 1992, while completing Master’s research in the same field at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, she began producing multimedia projects with Voyager, a pioneering company in the field. In 2000, after freelancing and teaching interactive media at the Université de Paris-8, she joined Virtools, publishers of software for creating interactive applications in real-time 3D. She designed If/Then Open Source with Richard Siegal and Florent Bérenger in 2006, and their creative tool for collaborative choreography received the SACD Prize at Monaco Dance Forum. She currently divides her time between producing applications at Virtools and her personal artistic projects.
JEAN-PHILIPPE LAMBERT
Jean-Philippe Lambert’s background spans science and music, as well as performance technique with Benjamin Champy in the theater section of INSA in Lyons, France. He also helped found a Master’s Degree in Technical Direction in collaboration with ENSATT. Since 2001, he has done research at Ircam for various projects including Phase and Voxstruments for the Sound Analysis and Synthesis Team, and the Real-Time Musical Interactions. He has created lighting, music and software for performance, films and installations (Pulx, Richard Siegal, colletif des Esprits Solubles, Michel Véricel, Roland Cahen). He has contributed to numerous artistic events internationally as Technical Director.
FIVOS MANIATAKOS
Engineer, musician and filmmaker, Fivos Maniatakos joined the Musical Representation and Real-Time Musical Interactions teams at Ircam in 2008 as part of the completion of his PhD. His research focuses on designing new modes of interaction and defining their roles in the context of multimedia performance.
THOMAS PENDZEL
Engineer trained at the Ecole Centrale in Paris, Thomas Pendzel spent ten years as an urban planner for the region of Paris. He shifted from this role to focus on a different approach to the city and its most basic components: the building, the street, the neighborhood. In 2007, he completed his first film, 5-7 rue Corbeau.
INCANDESCENCE creative studio, www.incandescence.com
Specialized in graphic design, Incandescence has been creating, producing and developing digital, video and interactive projects since 2000. The studio has long been involved with pluridisciplinary fields and new media (web, CD-Rom, video installation, print, mobile technology, DVD). Incandescence merges a broad range of complementary expertise from artistic creation to project management, graphic design to technical direction, as well as web development, print and sound design.