Editing and Narrative - Michael's tutorial

As a starting point for the following experiences, I used the python/pil and ffmpeg exercise, to sort images by brightness ((make grayscale, convert to 1x1px image, value the grayscaleness of this pixel)).

In this way, by altering the rhythm and even the connotation of the original movie - a new composition of body movement is created.

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Further references: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Female_nude_motion_study_by_Eadweard_Muybridge_(2).jpg

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Brightness: the luminance of a body that an observer uses to determine the comparative luminance of another body. (from www.thefreedictionary.com/brightness)

Brightness as the structural element of the new composition. Brightness as the common unit, linking the physical and digital performance. Transporting the visual effects of the illumination on the object and the object within a scene, towards the screen color values.

"(...) The same operation that was applied to the conservation of relation in the experiential compound can be transferred by analogy to alteration and passing away. The outcome is time, divided into standard and standardizing units that are like snapshots of transition. Stills. Like spatial cross-sections of what has come to pass. Time is now constructed of timeless elements modeled on the spaceless elements of space.As Henri Bergson argued, linear time is a retrospective spatialization of transition. The philosopher confounded by his table returns logically to the mement before the separating out of space and spatialized time from what actually appears. The experiential confound includes not only color and illumination. More exciting. or more disturbing, depending on your perspective - its fusion extends to space and time themselves." Brian Massumi, on the dimensions of visual experience, from the chapter The Brightness Confound - of the book "Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation".

The original video:

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The re-arrangement of the image sequence, by brightness, consequently creates a new movement sequence:

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In choreography's tradition, the traces of a performance, have fed the imagination, and given rise to new versions of future performances.

"Choreography's manifold incarnations are a perfect ecology of idea-logics; they do not insist on a single path to form-of-thought and persist in the hope of being without enduring." by William Forsythe

further references: http://sarma.be/oralsite/pages/William_Forsythe_on_Scores/ and http://www.ubu.com/film/forsythe_solo.html

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A pas de deux.

The continuation of the experiments followed this dialectical approach with the technology in use: the video camera. The frame of the video recording became a stage for performance. The movement is now specifically designed for the area prescribed by the camera's frame. The editing technique, in this case, the use of the python script based on brightness values, also triggered a more abstract experiment, focusing on the visual space perception. A technique very much used in observational drawings within anatomy studies. This time, the performance settings and the choreography is built on the positive and negative spaces created by the moving body in contrast with the background:

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further references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_space_(visual_arts) & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_(negative_space)

+ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_vase#/media/File:Rubin2.jpg

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References from the collection Dance with camera, by the curator Jenelle Porter, at Ubu website:

A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) - 2:13, b&w, silent

For this groundbreaking avant-garde film, Deren filmed dancer Talley Beatty as he performed a highly condensed dance sequence in a variety of settings, from a forest locale, to a sitting room, and finally to a sculpture-filled courtyard. Deren directed the camera as if it were a dancer, expertly using cuts, varying film speeds, and backwards motion to create a dance that could only exist on film. As Deren wrote in 1965, the dance is "so related to camera and cutting that it cannot be 'performed' as a unit anywhere but in this particular film." This work is considered one of the first major filmdances, and has influenced generations of artists and filmmakers since. http://www.ubu.com/dance/deren_study-in-choreography.html

Nine Variations on a Dance Theme (1966)

This prize-winning film captures dancer Bettie de Jong, a longtime member of the Paul Taylor Company, as she performs a single dance theme numerous times. Harris shot de Jong from a variety of different camera angles during twenty-five filming sessions over the course of a year, and then edited the sequences together as a montage, resulting in nine different variations on an identical series of movements. Like Maya Deren's 1945 dance film A Study in Choreography for Camera, Harris' film explores the possibilities opened up by dance on camera. http://www.ubu.com/film/harris_9-variations.html