ShadowPlay: Plato & His Shadow

Video documentation of performance of Plato & His Shadow, December 9, 2013, in the final class of Advanced Shadow Puppetry course at the Puppet Showplace Theater, taught by Artist in Residence Brad Shur. I used recorded audio in my performance (not ideal, but manipulating the puppets was all I could handle), so I added the audio to the video captured on the iPad, and added titles for this version.

Here is a previous post that has video of my first shadow puppet performance and some commentary on working with physical puppets instead of digital objects.

For documentation purposes, here is the video with low volume audio recorded at the performance:

Shedding Light on Shadows

I performed my first shadow puppet play (or any puppet piece, for that matter) tonight at the last session of the Introduction to Shadow Puppetry class I've been taking at the Puppet Showplace Theater, taught by the Artist-in-Residence, Brad Shur.

 It's been an exciting and humbling experience to try to make the 2 dimensional black puppets bend to my will. Overall, the puppets may have won (as the inanimate often tend to when we try to animate them in any medium), but I've thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and am glad that I took a more literal and physical detour to explore the shadows and puppetry I was using metaphorically in my current project, "ShadowPlay."

Here's video documentation of my project presented at the final class; you can hear the supportive and wonderful classmates and teacher, but what you don't see are the amazing pieces the other participants created, each so different and excellent.

Delving into shadow puppetry has changed the timeline for my larger project:

SHADOWPLAY

Although many people understand intellectually how performance capture works to combine CGI (computer-generated imagery) and live action footage in movies like Avatar (dir. James Cameron, 2009), and are increasingly accustomed to having a graphical representation of themselves on a screen in a video game or other application, the experience of having a virtual counterpart that you can control with your body, a virtual shadow, if you will, is still novel. 

This proposed project intends to make an interactive art installation experience in which participants engage in performance animation, using motion capture technology in real time to create a character performed by the participant, raising philosophical issues about embodiment, presence, the virtual,performance, and interactivity.

Using a Unity3D environment, Kinect motion sensors, and softwarre including Max/MSP,  Delicode's NI Mate, Animata, Processing, and Adobe After Effects, participants in the interactive installation will experiment and play with projected images , shadows, animations, and controllers.

This project is generously supported by a Berklee College of Music Faculty Fellowship.

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Course Materials

I'm gathering my disparate materials, spread all over the web, with this blog as the portal.  The goal is to have simple links for the courses I currently teach at Berklee and a few of the ones I taught previously at Emerson College and Western Illinois University.

Transformation: Virtual Art on the Brink

Mysterious Mission for Digital Narrative students at the MFA

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Watching Marclay's The Clock

Watching The Clock, Christian Marclay (2010)

MFA, October 6, 2011

Film Scoring 251: The Language of Film

Prof. Lori Landay

Today at the MFA, we’ll go into a screening room and start watching. We’ll come in in the middle of The Clock, because there is no real beginning or end to this film, only an ever-constant middle, a now. Watch until 2:45. You’ll know what time it is. Then we’ll meet outside, discuss your experience, and go back in again. Unfold this paper when you come out.

We’ll go back in, and watch until 3:26. Consider the following as you watch, and write up your response in a journal entry. We’ll discuss in class on Tuesday. After we leave, let’s walk through the contemporary art gallery. If you have to get back to campus, then go, and if not, you might want to go back in and see what it's like to decide to leave (after leaving twice at the times I gave you).

When you go back in:

1) Pay specific attention to editing. Where are the cuts? What pacing do they create?

2) What relationships are there between shots, especially between shots from different films?

3) Listen. The sound editing is subtle and quite brilliant. When does the sound change and when does the image change? When does Marclay use audio from a previous film into the next?

4) What is the effect, on you, of watching the film? How do you experience time while you watch it? What else does The Clock call attention to?

5) What is film? What is it to watch a film, to experience cinema? Is The Clock a film (or a movie), or is it a clock? What is at stake in saying it is one or the other?

6) Is there anything of Classical Hollywood Cinema in The Clock? Think about narrative and style.

STOP WATCHING AGAIN AT 3:26

Blog Central

I'm sifting through some social media and personal branding, and saw that this blog was available, so I had to grab it. For now, it's a central location for links to my various blogs, and that's it.