Sa, 06.11.2010, 20:00 Uhr

CO-ME-DI-A Showcase

HfMT Hamburg Schauspielstudio 3 Laser Avatars Broadcast from Vienna and Hamburg Laser Turing Test for Dancers - Johannes Kretz Send Me A Sound - Andrea Szigetvári A multimedia work involving music, dancers and lasers is presented as a live broadcast from Vienna and Hamburg. Two dancers in two different cities interact with each other performing music on laser harps. The two venues are connected together on the internet, and the dancers' gestures are visualized in form of laser beam animations (laser avatars) and are sonified with the help of laser sensors and music generating software. Laser Turing Test for Dancers - Johannes KretzThe famous "Turing Test" is a method for determining the intelligence of a machine proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 in his paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". The idea of Turing was to let a person A communicate with either a person B or a machine separated in another room (for example connected through a computer terminal). Person A is allowed to ask any kind of questions and has to judge from the answers, whether it is more likely that he is communicating with a human or a machine. The "Laser Turing Test for Dancers" by Johannes Kretz follows a similar idea. Two dancers are interacting (over hundreds of kilometres) by a system of animated laser harps and sensors connected through the internet. Their gestures and even their breathing are captured by sensors, translated into electronic sounds and laser animations, whose control data is sent to the other venue, where the other dancer sees and hears the same sounds and animations and therefore can react. Since the setup is completely symmetric, we have in both venues a dialogue between a dancer and an Avatar of the remote dancer. The audience is invited – in analogy to the Turing test – to judge, whether the "Avatar" appears to be more likely a computer controlled "robot" or actually something representing a real human being remotely. Can we perceive "human qualities" even when transporting them through such a restricted channel of information? Send Me A Sound - Andrea SzigetváriThe piece is a critical study of networked performance in the field of art exploring what kind of communication strategies can be applied to defeat the deficit caused by the fact the performers are not in the same place. As researchers focusing on the ecological approach to social interaction show, new technologies seldom simply support old working practices with additional efficiency or flexibility. Instead they tend to undermine existing practices and to demand new ones. While new technology usually extends the ability to perform existing tasks, it might limit some aspects of usual activities. The LaserAvatar setup creates a possibility for two dancers situated in two different rooms to interact with each other visualizing and sonifying their gestures with the help of laser beams. The invisible dancer-partner is present in the room in the form of a poetic avatar, an audiovisual metaphor. The limitation of the visual information calls for added means of communication. "Send Me A Sounds" tries to revive some old methods like speech or fairytale-like dynamic audiovisual synchronicities mixed with humour to recreate the "human" link between performers. Hamburg:Andrea Ladányi (laserharp), Andrea Szigetvári (live electronics) Ádám Siska (programming and computer music assistant) Vienna: Martina Kovács (laserharp), Johannes Kretz (live electronics) Budapest: Attila Kalcsú, János Wieser (lasertechnics)