Thoughts on dance in a virtual world

I had the opportunity to discuss projects recently with folks at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the prestigious modern dance institution in western Massachusetts, founded in 1930 by pioneer modern dance artist Ted Shawn. As you might see from a cursory perusal of this website, I’ve spent a fair number of years (32) immersed in the dance culture of New York City. That has waned since 2004 when I became immersed in virtual worlds.

And then… hmmm… a thought. Is immersion in virtual reality really a significant world apart from creating dance for the video medium? Dare I even consider this a expansion of a theme?

I became involved with dance in 1972 when, taking a position in the CUNY system (City University of New York) teaching students to use the newly invented portable video equipment, one student turned out to be a serious modern dancer, and i was suddenly catapaulted into both performing arts and video.

As I said in an article in 1975 , pointing a video camera at dance, with the intention of conveying the art of the movement, creates a new “space”, and indeed a variation on the movement art: “videodance”. The dancer and videographer together, with their respective motions; the dancer initiating, the videographer responding; shape space out of the video ether. The space is an extension of the dancer’s movement, in a very literal and graphic way. The videographer participates in the dancer’s motion; the collaborative effort of the two people create the new movement creation.

Clearly, with videodance, space is created. The videographer, and later the viewer, experience that space as if through a window. As with a movie, if the art is effective, the viewer is absorbed; outside stimuli become forgotten, and the viewer is transported into the space itself.

The concept was formed in the abstraction of the “black box”, a standard theater environment where all spatial references are removed, and the audience sees only the performer as the sole visual element. An example of this is “Bone Dream“.  “Mother and Child“, created with Maureen Fleming, is another very successful example that’s been shown at festivals around the world.

But, creating a “movement space” led to a curious question. Maybe the space could be structured. While perhaps the core was that space created by the “initiator” (the dancer) and the “responder” (the videographer), maybe that core could be structured into a relationship with other “spaces”, either visual images or literal three dimensional spaces.

I began by collecting video footage of spaces that convey some depth… a beach, a path, natural spaces of all kinds… and combining the dance “movement space” with these “found spaces”. (Somewhat more complex examples are “Widening Gyre” and “Elayne“) I also found real life spaces and videotaped dancers moving within those spaces.  ( “Story“)

Hmmm… well. Space turns out to be interesting. Naturally one considers in what other ways can we shape space. Back in the late 1980’s, in what was for the PC computer world still a “DOS” environment, several new programs surfaced.

Microsoft Flight Sim shaped space, and the user could fly airplanes in that space. Using the primitive technique of recording the computer screen with a video camera, I captured the flying space of an airplane in Flight Sim (fortunately, the cockpit was removeable), and then combined the dance movement with the Flight Sim space.

Another *early* DOS program was Vistapro. This too was a “world-builder”… different than Flight Sim in that you could shape your own hills and valleys. But, soon after this, came Animatek “World Builder” (version 0.9 then, and now available as version 4). And suddenly I had the opportunity to shape a world in detail, the hills, valleys, trees, sky and sun. I explored combining the dancer’s movement space with the three dimensional created space from Worldbuilder. (“Axis Mundi“)

You’ll note a small Greek church in Axis Mundi. This is an import from 3D Studio Max, again in its DOS versions when I first learned it. Worldbuilder enabled the creation of “outside, natural spaces”… the fractal geometry of the real natural world. But 3D Studio Max enabled the creation of inside spaces… in this case the inside and outside of a church. I explored this most elaborately in “Sorrows” which combines all the kinds of spaces discussed here… black box, real world footage, WorldBuilder and 3D Studio Max spaces.

Well… by the early 2000’s I had explored all the spaces that I could devise. What qualities characterized all these experiments?

The essential element is video. The movement, and the spaces structured around it, were “captured” on tape, which later became files of course. But the essential quality is that they are captured; that unlike the live performance in which the “initiator” and the “recipient” share the same “time space”, with video the event is captured, the movement event is frozen; no matter how often the video is “played” the experience is identical, pixel for pixel, and audio bit by audio bit. Like watching a well known movie, the experience becomes familiar. It is no longer “at the moment”, such as what the videographer experiences when immersed in the capture of the movement.

A diversion here. In 2001 Microsoft released Train Simulator, on the premise that the train fans wanted into the fun that the airplane fans had been having for so many years with Flight Simulator. Train fans like myself became instantly absorbed, and the volume of user generated content swamped the forums within months of its release. An instant community was born.

Apart from my tiny experiments with the DOS Flight Sim in the late 80’s, I’d never before worked within a live, interactive, three dimensional space, and I was completely hooked. Train Sim was, and is, a severely limited space, and not at all one that could be exploited for the movement arts. But it does incorporate the ability to create and shape one’s own naturalistic world, and embue it with stuuningly beautiful qualities of land, water, sky and weather, as well as vegatation and buildings. I became an expert in Train Sim weather and water systems, and contributed a very successful freeware product called Kosmos.

Train Sim is not captured experience, but, like a video game, it’s live. For years I’d observed younger relatives playing videogames, and I became particularly excited when videogames became MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games… Everquest, World of Warcraft). But games were depressingly structured. My interest was personal creativity, especially the motion of the body.

In November 2004 I became aware of Second Life, and within hours had inserted myself there. As many folks know, I’ve been completely absorbed ever since.

Second Life is a totally live environment. Only the “machinimists” are doing what I used to do, capturing live time events and preserving them, fixing them in time (I’ve done a few, of course, for clients). But world creation, as in WorldBuilder, is infinitely capable, and in this case I, in the form of my avatar, can walk thru it, also in real, live time. The buildings I did in 3D Studio Max, these too can be created and experienced, all live. The palette for creating space has exploded. The possibilities are infinitely greater  than the options I faced 20 years ago.

So, we come back to dance. Yes… one could use Second Life for a substitute WorldBuilder/3D Studio Max space shaper, and then record x minutes of that space, combine it (“share its space”) with x minutes of recorded human movement art, and call it the more perfect “videodance”. But… why? Why go back to fixing something in time for playback later? What about thinking of enabling that exhilirating experience of the videographer’s  participation” in the experience of movement *with* the movement artist?

(more soon)…

Time for change

Sometime before June 2010 Full House Productions will cease to be. Fundamental changes in the advertising industry and its related media production marketplace have caused the Full House partners to decide on this step, seeing the future, while the company is still healthy.

Beta Technologies will continue. As Web 3.0/VirtualKosmos takes form and emerges from the current flat internet, Beta Technologies will thrive.

But at this time Beta Technologies is a frontier business at the wild western boundaries of global culture. A labor of love; an investment in the future. But today, too, must be provided for, so I confront a change of direction.

It’s time for a new venture to which my energies will be devoted. It leads off like this:

Jeffrey C Bush
non profit finance and administration
people management
business and technology management
virtual world content development
Goals
Administration and creative output in arts and business related organizations of all kinds, management of creative personnel, computer business systems and media technology. To engage in the forward edge of cultural communications, such as the new wave of attention to virtual worlds.

“New world” enterprise announcement.

On December 1, 2008, a new corporation Beta Technologies US Inc was formed in the “real life” State of New York, country United States. Beta Technologies US is affiliated with the already existent Beta De Orion – Consultoria E Producao De Conteudos Informaticos, LDA, in the “real life” city of Lisbon, country Portugal. Together they form Beta Technologies, Architects of the Metaverse http://betatechnologies.info.

Evolution

We’ve evolved now to a net of human communication and interconnection, no longer just face to face, but tied together globally, so that each of the Earth’s 6.7 billion people (at least those with internet access… an ever increasing proportion of the whole) has equal possibility of knowing and interacting with any other.Olaf Stapledon, in “Last and First Men“, 1930, and then in “Starmaker“, 1937, predicted as much. William Gibson, in “Neuromancer“, 1984, and then Neil Stephenson, in “Snow Crash“, 1992, charted the specifics… they had the benefit of seeing the internet “just born”. Philip Rosedale, in 2003, launched Second Life, not the first virtual interactive world, but the first one in the image of the true nature and range of human interaction.

Far from being “escapist”, virtual reality space is a marker on the path of human evolution.

Enterprise in the “new world”

Herein will be found news and information about enterprise in Second Life, as well as thoughts regarding “real life”, and perhaps in upcoming eras other worlds as well.

In Second Life reach me via IM to Jeff Brooks.

In Real Life I go by the name Jeff Bush.

Welcome!