/choreographic-interventions-s20

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Choreographic Interventions Syllabus - Spring 2020

Course Structure | See introductory description below.

Over the course of the semester, we will cover 3 topic areas that correspond to 3 parameters of choreography: Pathways, The Body and Space. Topics will be introduced through movement-based improvisation exercises. Computational strategies will be examined through code examples. For each topic, students will create small movement studies with the aim of fully exploring how technology "intervenes" and changes the choreographic process.

The class will culminate in a showing of student work. The final project will take the form of a live performance.

This class runs in conjunction with a course in the Barnard/Columbia Dance Department and will comprise of students from both NYU and Barnard/Columbia.

Because course topics are organized around movement concepts, technical topics will be introduced and built upon week to week.

  • What do cameras see? What don't they see?
  • Skeletons, Depth Maps and Contours
  • Position versus speed of movement
  • Scaling and Mapping values
  • 2D Position tracking
  • 2D Projection mapping
  • Computational approaches to choreographing pathways of motion
  • Computational approaches to dividing and defining space
  • Modes of interaction

"Soft Skills" we will practice:

  • Sketching (as in drawing on paper) choreographic ideas.
  • Designing and defining rule sets for movement.
  • Designing and defining rules of interaction.
  • Deconstructing choreography into parameters for code.
  • Extracting choreographic ideas from code.

Workbook

Each topic will be introduced through paper-based drawing exercises and code examples. Google Drive Link

Programming Resources

Dance + Movement Resources

Week 0: Introduction for Barnard Wednesday 1:10-2:25PM, Friday 2-5PM

Assignment

  • p5.js Code! Tutorials
    • Introduction
    • Drawing
    • Animation (Video 2.6 is optional)
    • Total Time: ~2.5 hours
  • Continue working on your opening choreography in code by animating movement. Make something at least 30 seconds long. Get as far as you can get. Post a link to your sketch here.

Week 1: Introduction Friday 2-5PM (Everyone)

Questions

  • Why are we here?
  • What is computational thinking? What is choreographic thinking?
  • What are different modes of interaction?
  • What are the parameters of choreography?
  • How is code an expressive medium?

In-class

  • Walking improv.
  • 1-on-1 walking duet.

Introduction to Pathways

  • Can a pathway be expressive?
  • How do you choreograph pathways in drawings?

Resources

Assignment: Due next Friday.

  • Read and complete Chapters 0 and Chapter 1.0-1.2 of the Workbook
    • Print it out and complete the exercises by hand. Staple it. Put your name on it. Submit it next Friday.
  • For background on approaches to composition and movement improvisation:

Barnard Assignment: Due next Wednesday.

  • p5.js Code! Tutorials
    • Interaction (~1.5 hours)
  • Duplicate your sketch and keep working on your 30 second opening choreography in code. Try finding a way to add in a loop. Get as far as you can get. Give it a real title! Post a link here.

Week 2: Pathways: line()

Questions

  • What can a line express?

In-class

  • Interacting with a static line
  • Interacting with a moving line

Resources

Assignment: Study No. 1 Linear Pathways

  • Create a duet or trio that involves at least 1 moving line() that will be projected on the floor. Design interactions with the line(s) with drawings. Specify facing, direction of movement and speed. Specify the parameters of movement you are working with to develop your choreography.

Barnard Assignment: Due next Wednesday.

Week 3: Pathways: random()

  • Workshop Study No. 1: Linear Pathways.

Questions

  • When does random() feel most random?

In-class

  • Random facings.
  • Random facings through sound.
  • Trios: Activating random spots.
  • Interacting with random spots on the floor.

Resources

Assignment:

Barnard Assignment: Due next Wednesday

Week 4: Pathways: sin() and cos()

Questions

  • What does a circle represent to you?

In-class

  • Random improv.
  • Circular floor work.

Resources

Assignment: Study No. 2 Circular Pathways

  • Choreograph a 30 - 90 second generative circular pathway. Create a floor choreography that interacts with that circular pathway.
    • Take into consideration the dynamics and timing inherent to circular motion.
    • Make use of the whole body and it's ability to move circularly and linearly.
    • Discuss and diagram choreographic possibilities for how to interact with your pathway.
    • Post a link to your drawings and code you will demo with here: Assignment Page

Barnard Assignment: Due next Wednesday

  • Add to your Line() class so that you can assign start and end framecounts to control when the line moves and when it doesn't. Post a link here.

Week 5: The Body

  • Workshop Study No. 2: Circular Pathways.

Questions

  • What makes a body recognizably human?
  • What do computers see when they see a human body?

In-class

Assignment

Barnard Coding Assignments

lines[GEORGE].update();
lines[GEORGE].display();

Week 6: The Body (cont'd)

Questions

  • How can we re-architect the body?
  • How can a body choreograph interaction? How can interaction choreograph a body?

In-class

Assignment: Study No. 3 The Joint Dance.

Week 7: The Joint Dance

  • Workshop The Joint Dance.
  • Introduce webcam based skeleton tracking with ml5.js and Posenet
  • Introduce phone sensors

Questions

Examples

Resources

Assignment: Study No. 3 The Joint Dance.

Optional Position Tracking Material

Week 8: Going fullScreen()

Questions

  • How does the webcam define space?
  • How does the laptop screen define space?
  • What does it mean to interact with these virtual spaces through movement?
  • How do these spaces re-define the relationship between performer and audience?

In-class

Assignment: Explore Online-As-Space

  • Play with the examples above.
  • Please post both your written response and chair dance study by 10AM Friday so that we have enough time on Friday to review and respond to the material before class. Before class, I will ask you review everyone's examples of online performance and chair studies as well as leave written responses on at least 3 other people's work.
  • Write a short response to the following examples of online performance. (~3-5 sentences about each example.) What's the angle? Would it be possible in a live theater set-up? Would it be the same performance? What would be lost? Add a 4th of your own to analyze. It doesn't need to be a dance performance. It doesn't even need to be good! Just thought provoking about the medium. Post a link to your writing response here.
  • Chair Dance Study: Create 3 movements where each of the 6 parameters we identified in class is specified. Write-up your parameters in a document and link to it on the assignments page. Practice each movement until it feels like a movement. Connect them together in a pattern. Video yourself repeating the pattern 5 times. Please post your video and parameters here.
  • Think about who you would like to work with on the final project. (I will send out link to spreadsheet.)

Week 9: New Technologies

Assignment: Hello Glitch

  • Watch video tutorials
  • If you're feeling good about the tutorials, try to combine Streaming Skeleton with either Face-Tracking or Hand-Tracking. Post a link to your Glitch project.
  • Generate 60 minutes of movement research. See details here. Post your video here along with a description of your 4th technique by next Thursday evening. Please comment on all of the videos before class on Friday.
  • Start to collect source material this week. Divide and conquer but cover all of these areas: Ideas for physical set-up. Explorations of camera angles. Sound, visuals, video, text. Drawings of choreographic ideas and videos of movement research. Stick them all in your folder on Google Drive. (I will send out an invite to a shared folder.)

Over the next 3 weeks, in groups of 2-4, create an online dance performance that includes at least 1 performer and 1 audience member. You may make use of Zoom. There are no limitations on duration.

Project Development: Weeks 10, 11, 12

Week 10

Assignment:

Week 11

Assignment

Showing: Week 12

Original Weeks 8-12 of the Syllabus

Week 7: Space | Boundaries and Divisions

Questions

  • What are the parameters of space?
  • What are all the ways to define a space?
  • What are all the ways to interact with a space?
  • What are all the ways to divide a space?
  • What are all the ways to define a boundary?
  • What's the difference between a division and a boundary?

In-class

Assignment

  • Complete Chapter 3.0-3.3 of the Workbook
  • Watch: Jiri Kylian | NDT : Sweet Dreams
    • What are all the ways in which Kylian is working with space? How are the spaces defined?
    • Why angular spaces? Why sharp edges? How would it be different if he used more traditional spotlights?

Week 8: Space | Defining Space With Bodies

Questions

  • Are defining and interacting with space the same thing?
  • Does one preclude the other?

In-class

Assignment: Dynamic Spaces

Project Development: Weeks 9, 10, 11

Week 9 Assignment

Over the next 4 weeks, in groups of 3-4, create a movement-based interactive work that explores one or more modes of interaction and one or more of parameters of choreography from this course. The work can take the form of an installation or a performance. Installations can be time-based or persistent with no definitive start or end time. The only requirement is that the choreography must be interactive, meaning the performers are making choreographic decisions in real-time. This doesn’t mean there is no element of pre-set choreography, however there must be room in the choreographic structure for individual decision-making. You will have a maximum of 10 minutes to show your work. Each group will consist of 1-2 students from ITP and 1-2 students from Barnard.

Showing: Week 12

Course Description

This course re-conceives interactive media as a form of choreographic intervention. Instead of asking how moving bodies can control media, we will ask how rules of interaction can structure the composition of a dance.

To accomplish this, the class facilitates a semester-long collaboration between ITP students and dancers from the Barnard/Columbia Dance Department. Choreographers will learn to apply computational thinking to choreography and creative coders will learn to apply choreographic thinking to computation. To whatever extent possible, we will attempt to embody code.

Using computer vision and visual media, we will look at directing both how people move (quality of movement) as well as where they move (pathways and spatial relationships).

We will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the various sensing technologies available to us today. How wide is the gulf between what we can see and feel (strength, hardness, contortion) and what a computer can see and interpret (locations, contours, velocity)? Class time will be split between movement exercises, playing with examples and deconstructing code.

The class will culminate in a final showing of student work.

All classes will take place at NYU with a separate weekly technical lab for ITP students.

Pre-requisites

The course is intended both for anyone looking to deepen their practice in working with movement-based interaction regardless of previous experience with movement technique or programming.

As a result, there is no pre-requisite for dance and no pre-requisite for code.

Evaluation

  • 40% for showing up (on time!) and participating with curiosity and enthusiasm.
  • 15% for each topic study. (Pathways and Body)
  • 30% for the final project.
  • More than 2 unexcused absences qualifies you for a failure.
  • 2 lateness of 15 minutes or more qualifies as 1 unexcused absence.

Please see ITP's statement on Pass/Fail which states that a "Pass" is equivalent to an "A" or a "B" while anything less would be considered a "Fail".

We will have weekly assignments that are relevant to material from the previous class. These assignments are required and you should be prepared to show/talk about them in class. It is expected that everyone in the class will create and maintain a blog for their assignments.

Attendance is mandatory. Please inform your teacher via email if you are going to miss a class. Two unexcused absences is cause for failing the class. (An unexcused lateness of 10 minutes or more is equivalent to 1/2 an absence.)

This class will be participatory, you are expected to participate in discussions and give feedback to other students both in class and participate with their projects. This (along with attendance) is 40% of your grade.

Class will culminate with final projects. You are expected to push your abilities to produce something that utilizes what you have learned in the class that is useful in some manner to yourself or the world. This will comprise 20% of your grade.

Statement of Academic Integrity

Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work as though it were your own. More specifically, plagiarism is to present as your own: A sequence of words quoted without quotation marks from another writer or a paraphrased passage from another writer’s work or facts, ideas or images composed by someone else.

Statement of Principle

The core of the educational experience at the Tisch School of the Arts is the creation of original academic and artistic work by students for the critical review of faculty members. It is therefore of the utmost importance that students at all times provide their instructors with an accurate sense of their current abilities and knowledge in order to receive appropriate constructive criticism and advice. Any attempt to evade that essential, transparent transaction between instructor and student through plagiarism or cheating is educationally self-defeating and a grave violation of Tisch School of the Arts community standards. For all the details on plagiarism, please refer to page 10 of the Tisch School of the Arts, Policies and Procedures Handbook, which can be found online at: http://students.tisch.nyu.edu/page/home.html

Statement on Accessibility

Please feel free to make suggestions to your instructor about ways in which this class could become more accessible to you. Academic accommodations are available for students with documented disabilities. Please contact the Moses Center for Students with Disabilities at 212 998-4980 for further information.

Statement on Counseling and Wellness

Your health and safety are a priority at NYU. If you experience any health or mental health issues during this course, we encourage you to utilize the support services of the 24/7 NYU Wellness Exchange 212-443-9999. Also, all students who may require an academic accommodation due to a qualified disability, physical or mental, please register with the Moses Center 212-998-4980. Please let your instructor know if you need help connecting to these resources.

Statement on use of Electronic Devices

Laptops will be an essential part of the course and may be used in class during workshops and for taking notes in lecture. Laptops must be closed during class discussions and student presentations. Phone use in class is strictly prohibited unless directly related to a presentation of your own work or if you are asked to do so as part of the curriculum.