DIGITAL INCARNATE ARCADE GALLERY, COLUMBIA COLLEGE
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Four collectives produced the five pieces in Digital Incarnate, capitalizing on their members’ expertise in computer science, drawing, sculpture, and film, as well as dance. All four manipulate and control the human form, generating sometimes Frankensteinian creations that, however abstracted or distorted, still reflect humanity.
In Troika Ranch’s Liquid Mirror (2010) a camera records the viewer’s moving image, runs it through the real-time Isadora program (created by Mark Coniglio), and plants it in warped form on a triptych of screens. The first time I saw the piece I walked right by, barely noticing its subtle sound and movement effects. Turns out you have to put in some effort (and look like an idiot, waving your arms, jumping up and down, rushing the screens) to get a satisfying response—mostly bubbles and whirlpools forming and dissolving on a viscous surface. You may think you’re controlling the image, but it’s also controlling you.
The Synchronous Objects kiosk departs from actual dancing to dissect the principles of choreography. This elegant Web site (accessible at synchronousobjects.osu.edu) was created at Ohio State University by cognitive and computer scientists, architects, designers, philosophers, statisticians, and dancers in order to transform choreographic aspects of William Forsythe’s dance work, One Flat Thing, Reproduced, into digital abstractions and expose its “interlocking systems of organization.” A 15-minute animation titled “MotionVolumes,” for instance, reveals “the outer edges of the dancers’ motions” in vibrating, morphing snakes that look like they were molded out of clay.
The Science, Technology, and Dance performance series continues with Troika Ranch (3/4-3/6) and Wayne McGregor/Random Dance (3/18-3/20). All performances Thu-Sat 8 PM, Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan, 312-369-8330, colum.edu/dancecenter, $24-$28.
