FRAG CITY

The dance had been passed down as memes (from master to student) since the seventh century and now, in the projected media studio of Sogang university, I am projecting a special software over that dance to analyze the gestures. The software lets me watch how the space is used by the traditional dancer and I view three things that come out of this for possible use in addition to the beautiful pictures that the media makes in reaction to the dance. The media used by the student enhances these qualities:

1. Student: it would help the modern student of this ancient dance to watch and approximate the movements of the master as they can be recorded and transferred through the projected spatialized media (my Indian dance associate said that the teach often just sat in front of the student and told the dancer what they are doing as a manifestation of the moves from the inside.

2. Audience: this visual software…, which crates a type of prosthetic for seeing, can help the aficionado and the greater audiences a continued appreciation of this ancient dance. (Ironically a lot of the dance was reconstructed for modern times by the visual culture of painting the dancers moves in ancient scrolls)

3. Collaborator: the watcher becomes a collaborator…with the inclusion of this visual analysis software. My vectors cross over the body and demonstrate the lines and the ‘chi’ of the performance. The outside edges of the frame become a way of calibrating (by the master) the lines of the performance in relationship to the edges. We can then turn these edges into types of harmonic or atonal music; we could also turn it into olfactory transducers (digital to analog output) into pleasant scents. We could also turn this into the velocity of a fountain or we could combine this with the Fibonacci databases of the financial markets online and combine this with the ancient dance. There are a lot of things we could do with this.

What the media does with the visual analysis. Human computer interface and ancient performance practices. We find a reclaiming of the portrayal, the use, and the ultimate citizen use of space that would increase awareness and, perhaps, a sense of agency over the ‘annihilation of space’.