For our current work-in-progress, Upending, we’ve been experimenting with (among many other techniques) hand-drawn strokes captured with a Wacom tablet and aligned with 3D models. Above is from a study of a figure and a chair.

Upending takes the form of live stereoscopic cinema. The frames reproduced above — of a chair and its shadow — are from our first stereoscopic shoot for the production. Though striking in and of themselves, they are simply raw material for the more complex representations to be created from them for the piece.

The work is commissioned by Empac and will premiere in 2010.

 

St. Petersburg

In April we exhibited a new version of Point A –> B in St. Petersburg. A high-resolution visualization of the new version may be found here, and an illustrated account of the fascinating exhibition site here.

 

NEH

Downie and Kaiser recently received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to make freely available the tools for the reconstruction of 3D space from unstructured collections of photographs. The underlying algorithms for this technique were created at the University of Washington, but to date the only front end for the technique is provided in proprietary form by Microsoft as a website attraction. By the end of June, we will post a front end for this technique, which will function within our open source Field software environment (see below).

As part of the same grant, we are working with the Aperture Foundation to create a case study on how to use these techniques as a scholarly tool for historical investigation.

In addition, we’re making creative use of this technique to fashion “frameless films,” in stereoscopic projection, for our current work-in-progress Upending; an initial demonstration of the possibilities may be found here.

 

Field

Field — our hugely ambitious open source platform for creating digital art — is now available in beta form.

A general introduction to what we intend with Field may be found here.

The main site for hosting the program is here — this includes an overview of its features, full documentation with numerous tutorials, and of course the beta download itself.

 

Loops open source

Loops is our open source collaboration with Merce Cunningham. Ambitious programmers and scholars may participate in the experimental Loops preservation project by downloading the beta version of the source code to Loops (the digital artwork) and/or by downloading the archival versions of Cunningham’s motion-captured performance (links to both may be found here).

 

Agent

Marc is coding up the Choreographic language agent, which takes a novel approach to creating dance movements.

A first version, which of course runs on Field, will soon be put through its paces as choreographer Wayne McGregor of Random Dance uses it to create a new dance.

 

Horizon

Horizon is the public arts project originally commissioned for the Atlanta Airport in 2005 but only now moving into production. This summer we finished revising our original storyboard to match a complete redesign of the new terminal, which is now to open in 2011.

Horizon now aims for an even tighter interactivity between artwork and events in the terminal. The artwork will respond more directly to its surroundings — to the movement and appearance of travelers as they traverse the space and to the actual airport activity seen through the large adjacent window. An example of this is illustrated on the main Horizon page.

 

Dance revived

Two of our earlier dance collaborations have recently received renewed attention.

Hand-drawn Spaces has been designated a “masterwork” by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is providing the funds for its complete restoration. This was our first collaboration with Merce Cunningham, an installation we made in 1998.

The newly restored version will be presented in the public gallery of the World Financial Center here in New York in 2010. The nea designation came about through the generous advocacy of HarvestWorks, which also supported the creation of the original work.

Ghostcatching was chosen by the Lincoln Center Institute as the focus work of art for its first online course for the professional development of educators, which was launched this past fall.

 

Interview published

One chapter of Johannes Birringer’s recently published Performance, Technology, & Science features an interview with Downie and Kaiser on the role of artificial intelligence in our work (among other topics). This chapter is given as an online sample here in pdf form.

A still from the live performance of 22 with Bill T. Jones serves as the book’s cover illustration.