Oana Suteu Khintirian: SERRA _ ripe _ new concept _1903

Entering the space, one sees a bright overarching ceiling and on the ground a series of reflective surfaces, or luminous ‘pools’. The ceiling is a large projection surface on which one perceives images of plants in motion taken from a low angle perspective (as if we were lying half a meter below the ground). However, the proximity to the ceiling should make it difficult to clearly read the images when standing up. From this position, one should be prompted to rather turn their sight towards the floor. On the floor, the pools of water reflect the same accelerated images of plants seen on the ceiling, yet stopping to look at them triggers the images to slow down to the threshold of barely perceptible motion, plant movement as perceived in human time. The surrounding walls are dark and the floor is occasionally vibrating from the stimuli retransmitted by transducers, which makes the water surface ripple at times. On the ground, large cushions (or a slight ramp) invites the passerby to rest. If one lays down, they can clearly see looking up the plants moving, reacting to one another and to the presence of the observers. From this perspective, where the human body is at rest, one sees the movement in another temporality, plant time

hi all,

Let me share with you the new concept for the design of SRRA_ripe and please let me know what your think! Would a quick skype on Friday be possible?

best
Oana

Serra set design, update coming

Oana’s latest insight over last few hours
on the set design for Serra’ is quite beautiful.  
I just heard about it and will let Oana describe it herself !

It has conceptual crispness — 
a lot of experiential aspects click into place — 
and it seems buildable.   

As a resonance:
it also leads me to re-understand a most cherished poem: 
Dylan Thomas’ The force that through the green fuse drives the flower,
which comes into play in the last two pages of my book,
on ethico-aesthetic play and the re-enchantment of the world.






Gratefully

elegant mappings of motion into graphics by Tobias Grumbler

Jitter artists:

Tobias Gremmler’s elegant, straightforward mappings of motion into graphic renderings could be a nice inspiration for 
mocap —> jitter if we can figure how to work with a sparse set of trackers.


The quality suggests it is not realtime, but this is useful for ideas for jitter instruments that should be doable in Max 7 / gen.
The primitives are lines and points, so not very challenging to render on gpu.   We don’t have the density.   

Could be time to implement camera-based tracker-free mocap as jitter externals.





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skype: shaxinwei • mobile: +1-650-815-9962
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________________________________________________________________________________________
Sha Xin Wei, PhD • Professor and Director • School of Arts, Media and Engineering + Synthesis
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts + Fulton Schools of Engineering • ASU
Fellow: ASU-Santa Fe Center for Biosocial Complex Systems
Affiliate Professor: Future of Innovation in Society; Computer Science; English
Founding Director, Topological Media Lab
skype: shaxinwei • mobile: +1-650-815-9962
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

the best carbon sequestering system in the world, solutionism

Forest : the best carbon sequestering system in the world
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/02/11/the-solution-to-climate-change-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-cars-or-coal/?tid=a_inl

vs

Tech-based solutions limited by framing assumptions, such as:

assumptions include:
solution by novel technology 
no change in car and airplane travel
no change in consumer behavior 
no change in commodity-based markets

Engineering research implies
(1) new technology rather than non-technological considerations;
(2) the solutions have to be “new”
(3) Solutionism : the drive to find a “solution” to a "problem" rather than 
determine and achieve socio-economic-symbolic conditions 
under which the problem does not even arise. 


All good approaches are welcome.  But how shall we tackle things in proportion to their strategic importance from cosmopolitical, ecological-economic, biosocial, historic as well as poetic-symbolic perspectives?

AME research and graduate proseminar: the problem with explaining things in terms of "'parts' of the brain"

Hardcastle and Stewart succinctly point out a fundamental problem at the heart of the methodology of neuroscience (and of cognitive science): the modularity thesis.

Neuroscience did not “discover” modules — loci of functions —  in brains.   Rather “they don’t even have a good way of accessing the appropriate evidence. It is a bias in neuroscience to localize and modularize brain functions.”

The problem with scientistic methodology is that you see what you expect to see.



There’s much more in play: Noah Brender’s work questions the modularity thesis underlying much of technoscience. 
However, another world is possible :)

Xin Wei

Re: production calendar for Montreal Workshop Nov 2-13

Hi Pete,

This is the SERRA project website: http://serracreation.weebly.com/
as conceived by Oana Suteu Khintirian, filmmaker from Montreal / Paris, and me
in collaboration with choreographer Ginette Laurin.
This workshop is the third in a series of workshops to generate choreographic material for proposal to get funding for a performance by O Vertigo, Ginette Laurin’s dance company in Montreal: http://www.overtigo.com/
The first workshop was May 2015 at O Vertigo’s Place des Arts blackbox.
Second was ours in iStage.
Third workshop in Nov 2-13. will be with her dancers.  Up to 7.


After Ginette green-lights the next phase — which Oana and I hope will come in the coming week or so.
I’ll introduce you to Adnre Houle, the TD for O Vertigo.
That way, Andre and you can confer directly  about precise specs: e.g. 
floor plan and elevation for O Vertigo’s beautiful blackbox space in the Place des Arts Montreal.

Their blackbox is a professional theater, about 3x the floor footage of iStage, roughly 5’ higher.

One wall (about 60’ wide) is half spanned by a projection surface.
Surrounded by black drapes.
Full dance floor,
Grid, with a standard complement of AV gear.   

Andre has about 30 years in the business, and was Michael Montanaro’s TD for Michael’s dance company.
He worked in iStage about 12 years ago when Michael, Sandy & company were resident here
as guests of ISA.  Nice guy to work with :)  Andre and OV have the experience and means 
to design and install standard theatrical,
and build or obtain scenographic material (like scrims screens).   

The exception would be the gear unique to our media system:
Mac computers
Software
Projectors (spec’ed to be bought or rented in Montreal.
Perhaps we can go to Solotech, I know the VP there.)

The November workshop is NOT a performance — no audience, only dancers and principal artists.
But we will use this to inform the spec for a touring kit.

Thanks,
Xin Wei

PS We need a project blog:  I’ve added the main folks who worked on the SERRA workshop to 
vegetal.posthaven.com/  (Check it out for prior history.)

You can post multimedia docs simply by emailing   post@vegetal.posthaven.com 




________________________________________________________________________________________
Sha Xin Wei • Professor and Director • School of Arts, Media and Engineering + Synthesis
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts + Fulton Schools of Engineering • ASU
Fellow: ASU-Santa Fe Center for Complex Biosocial Systems
Affiliate Professor: Future of Innovation in Society; Computer Science; English
Founding Director, Topological Media Lab
skype: shaxinwei • mobile: +1-650-815-9962
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

On Sep 7, 2015, at 11:31 AM, Peter Weisman <peter.weisman@asu.edu> wrote:

Hi all,

What workshop will be happening in Montreal? I would be more then happy to create a Production Calendar. But, I need to know all of the details and the people to be involved in AZ and those going to Montreal. Who in Montreal would be handling of the physical in Montreal?

Pete 



Happy Connecting. Sent from my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S® 5


-------- Original message --------
From: Xin Wei Sha <Xinwei.Sha@asu.edu>
Date: 2015/09/05 5:47 AM (GMT-07:00)
To: Todd Ingalls <Todd.Ingalls@asu.edu>, Christopher Roberts <cmrober2@asu.edu>, Peter Weisman <peter.weisman@asu.edu>
Subject: production calendar for Montreal Workshop Nov 2-13

How about if we draw up a proper production calendar for the Montreal Workshop  Nov 2-13:  software, local testing, gear, people logistics, workshop scheduling etc.  With milestones.

I’d like to consult Pete.  (We should not expect much active participation from Oana during this time.  At the right time with OV agreement, we’ll work with Andre Houle, the TD for O Vertigo.  Andre came to ASU with Michael Montanaro.)  

I will to be in Montreal Sep 19-24, so can advance prep for Todd (and or Julian)’s pre-staging trip in Montreal (October?) before the Nov workshop.

I will probably not be able to be in Montreal for the actual November workshop  since I’ll have to be in Phoenix to staff the fort, host Lexing, and do a UK loop.

Xin Wei


________________________________________________________________________________________
Sha Xin Wei • Professor and Director • School of Arts, Media and Engineering + Synthesis
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts + Fulton Schools of Engineering • ASU
Fellow: ASU-Santa Fe Center for Complex Biosocial Systems
Affiliate Professor: Future of Innovation in Society; Computer Science; English
Founding Director, Topological Media Lab
skype: shaxinwei • mobile: +1-650-815-9962
_________________________________________________________________________________________________