Ego Echo Installation – beta test from Jacob Niedzwiecki on Vimeo.

Ego Echo is a responsive installation work. Inspired by classical trompe l’oeil perspective and audio samplers & loop pedals, it acts as a mirror, reflecting a room and the people in it and capturing and sequencing movement.

This video is from the work’s beta test at the end of my one-week residency at the 2011 Dance: Made in Canada festival. The construction & visuals are preliminary; the focus was on testing and experimenting with the core concepts. More than sixty people participated in the beta, putting the work through its paces and helping to refine the creative focus and technical mechanics of the piece. The video was shot using a GoPro Hero camera to show a first-person perspective of the work.

Ego Echo was coded in Processing with a Kinect, using SimpleOpenNI and GLGraphics. Music is Lou Reed’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties“ from Animal Serenade, which was pretty much on a loop as I was coding.

Thanks to all our audience members and testers; the fine gents who built the libraries above; Andrew Pimento and Niko Beaubien for their help with setup & strike; Greg Witz at Witz Education for his help; Stuart Baulch for being a great host; Jeff Morris for his excellent ideas and advice; everyone else who helped out; and Yvonne Ng and Janelle Rainville at Dance: Made in Canada for supporting the work.

Spike Solutions #3 from Jacob Niedzwiecki on Vimeo.

This is the third in an ongoing series of short, focused screen tests of generative compositing techniques. In this diptych, the left and right halves use the same video material and grid; the left crops each instance of the source to a grid square, while the right shrinks it.

In other words, the video in any given zone of the left half is sampled (from that same zone) from the video in the corresponding location on the right half. In this screen test, each clip begins almost in sync, with a slight offset, so you can see movements in the grid ripple from bottom right to top left. A stochastic (fancy word for ‘random’) process occasionally jumps individual clips forward, out of sync. The perspective slowly fractures from a hard grid to shifting shards.

Spike Solutions #2 from Jacob Niedzwiecki on Vimeo.

This is the second in an ongoing series of short, focused screen tests of generative compositing techniques. In this diptych, the left and right halves use the same video material and grid; the left crops each instance of the source to a grid square, while the right shrinks it.

In other words, the video in any given zone of the left half is sampled (from that same zone) from the video in the corresponding location on the right half. In this screen test, each clip begins almost in sync, with a slight offset, so you can see movements in the grid ripple from bottom right to top left. A stochastic (fancy word for ‘random’) process occasionally jumps individual clips forward, out of sync.

Spike Solutions #1 (Diptych) from Jacob Niedzwiecki on Vimeo.

This is the first in an ongoing series of short, focused screen tests of generative compositing techniques. In this diptych, the left and right halves use the same video material and grid; the left crops each instance of the source to a grid square, while the right shrinks it. The video in any given zone of the left half is sampled (from that same zone) from the video in the corresponding location on the right half. In this screen test, each zone of video begins at a random point partway through the source footage.

Bastard Fugue features Naoya Ebe of the National Ballet of Canada, and live camerawork by yours truly. It premiered at Fresh Blood, a group show of work by young choreographers hosted by The Chimera Project, on October 29th at the Enwave Theatre in Toronto. The piece is set to a Bach fugue for organ, arranged instead for mixed percussion, and uses live projection to explore fugue structure with a single dancer. Special thanks to Naishi (Kamen) Wang for his valuable participation in the creation process. More credits and special thanks after the jump.

Many people helped midwife this piece. Ryan Fontaine, Robert Stephen, Jeff Morris, and Jenna Savella donated critical eyes, helping hands, and their unfailing pluck and enthusiasm. Adam Pasquella and Emma & Randy Niedzwiecki got me to the church on time; John Coups and Brian Aitken generously shared their technical expertise; Sharon DiGenova was exactly the sort of psychic stage manager the piece needed; and Janelle Rainville and Barb de Kat were their fabulous, supportive selves. I have to especially thank Malgorzata Nowacka for hosting the show and believing in the work. Thanks also to Trinity Square Video, Théâtre français de toronto, Canada’s National Ballet School, and the National Ballet of Canada.

Entry for the Dance Films Association “What Moves You” 48-Hour Challenge. Link changed to higher-quality version uploaded Sunday morning; the original is here.

Cast: Robert Stephen and Cristina Tucciarone. Special thanks to Pat and Cathie Dwyer, Aryon Elmers, Barbara Lane, Simon MacIntyre, Bev Peat, Jenn Stephen, John and Jane Stephen, Teri Worthington, and all our other donors.

Helioscape is set for release on iTunes as part of TenduTV’s first ‘Essential Dance Films’ compilation. Below is a trailer for the film.

Watch in HD.

Epitaph for Paul Harvey is a solo for dancer set to a heavily edited speech by Paul Harvey (the American syndicated radio host) and a video projection. The speech was tagged and edited using a custom text engine programmed in Processing. The solo is a component of a planned larger work, Variations on a Theme by Adam Smith.

The piece was shown as a work-in-progress at the Drake Hotel Underground in January 2009 with Luke Garwood performing.

The ballet consists of five movements, each pairing a musical and literary fragment. Two excerpts of the ballet were presented at the National Ballet of Canada’s Choreographic Showcase in September 2008.

The first and longest fragment is a parable, in which a king invites everyone in his kingdom to his daughter’s wedding feast, save two men: one blind, and one lame. They decide to avenge the slight by vandalizing the king’s garden, acting as each other’s eyes and legs. When the damage is discovered, they protest their innocence: their disabilities make it impossible for them to be the perpetrators. The king realizes they worked together and has them both flogged. The parable is that the soul is accountable for the actions of the body and vice versa.

The second performed fragment is in the voice of God, and translates as “As I find thee, so will I judge thee”; meaning, on judgment day, it is your present state of sin or grace that matters and not any of your life prior to the day.

Archival video of the work exists, but is not available online due to the terms of the collective agreement between Actor’s Equity and the National Ballet.

The excerpts were performed by Catherine Maitland, Joe Welbes, and Aarik Wells.

Superposition (IMDB) is an adventurous exploration of the territory that lies between live and recorded performance. The film records three complete performances of a dance solo, each through a coloured filter—red, green, and blue—and then superimposes them to reveal the subtle variations and surprising correspondences inherent to live performance. Visually striking and conceptually daring, Superposition exposes the paradox of precision in live performance.

The film features the National Ballet of Canada’s Marissa Parzei and an original score by Dustin Peters. It was shot in front of a live audience in May 2006 and premiered in competition at the 2007 Worldwide Short Film Festival. It is currently distributed non-exclusively by Movieola through Ouat Media.

Commentary

Okay, that’s the copy. Here’s the skinny: the film was a complete miracle. From concept to wrap was maybe five weeks. Dustin Peters composed an incredible six-hand piano score; I set the piece on Marissa in about a week; we organized a live shoot and all the pieces fell into place.

Then editing. We used six completely different cameras and three recording media (SVHS, miniDV, miniDVD). I learned how to colour-grade and conform footage by the same method monkeys use to teach their children to swim: throw them in the deepest part of the river and cross your fingers. I was dancing with the National Ballet at the time, and I started editing just as we went into a long rehearsal process for Sleeping Beauty. I‘d come home from the show around midnight, work until 3am, then be at class the next day at 11. I was actually grateful; facing Beauty without something else to work on might have done me in.