Navid Navab

transenses

T r a n S e n s e s

performance for solo dancer and interactive scenography (camera tracking, gestural sound, floor projection, real-time audiovisual processing, light sync, and spatialized soundfield)

2017. world premiere: Japan Society NY [17th Contemporary Dance Showcase: Japan + East Asia]

DESCRIPTION

Movements by choreographer/dancer Akiko Kitamura morph under the responsive audiovisual architecture of media alchemist Navid Navab.

Navab and Kitamura’s gestural-sonic mantras transcend aesthetic form to make the imperceptible palpable. That is to say, we embark with them on a metaphysical journey—of a body in conversation with the living cosmos, residing at once within and elsewhere. An interactive scenography and gestural sound instruments*, invisible to the senses, enchant the subtlest of activity, bringing the body into prominence.

We are fully immersed in unstable sonic architectures, which dissolve the dancer’s micro-movements into an ocean of ephemeral micro-intelligences, to reveal the body anew, in immediate vibrational relation. In turn, textural tonalities of the body’s movement cause this sonic ecology to morph, and self transmute in an endless performative feedback: sensually binding, spatially confusing and temporally unsettling. A compelling trans-sensorial universe that will pull you surely, inevitably into its vertiginous trance- like ritual.

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*Interactive scenography and gestural sound:

In gestural sound compositions what is conceived and composed is not the sounds but rather the dynamic relation between gesture and sound: what is composed is “the how” of continuous sonic morphologies being shaped under gestural contours. Dancer’s movements are picked up through an array of embedded sensors and realtime tracking cameras. The input from these sensors are processed through computer vision and machine-learning techniques and used in real-time to produce sonic and visual patterns, driven directly or at times indirectly by the dancer’s movements.

In TranSenses hyper sensitive tracking and sonification modules amplify gentlest of pseudo-somatic movement into astronomic sound events which expand, contract and move around the audience in correlation with the dancer’s movement contours, allowing the audience to get dizzy and enter mantric states along with the dancer.

CREDITS

NAVIKO [Akiko Kitamura + Navid Navab]: Ideation, artistic direction and dramaturgy
NAVID NAVAB: Audiovisual composition, gestural sound, interactive scenography, light design, programming, real-time video
AKIKO KITAMURA (JP): Choreography and performance
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Programming assistance: Evan Montpellier, Naoto Heida
Research collaboration: Topological Media Lab
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Support: Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI), Japan
Residencies: Black Box (Montreal, 06.2016), Morishita Studio (Tokyo, Japan 12.2016), Agora Black Box (Montreal, 2017)
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World premiere: Japan Society NY [17th Contemporary Dance Showcase: Japan + East Asia], Jan 2017
Canadian premiere: Tangente [Virtually in the Flesh], Montreal, April 2017

 

PRESS

“TranSenses,” was technically impressive, with elaborate interactive audiovisual effects. At every point Ms. Kitamura was brilliantly controlled. The solo, was overpolished, slick.

The New York Times, Alastar Mac, 01.2017

What if, as Navab suggests, we could use technologies of performance not to enforce binaries of the machine and the human but to illuminate qualities of the human that are otherwise imperceptible?

Kitamura’s twin is an extension or re-iteration of her own body, her own senses. Her virtual presence is sensed and altered through the bodies of the audience. This is what augmented reality can offer dance: an opportunity to imagine different possibilities and relations for the body — to better understand what the human is, and what it can be.

Hilary Bergen, The Dance Current Magazine, 09.2017

And then there was Transenses! Here, a single performer dances with the energy of an atomic bomb that explodes into fascinating floor-projections, light, and music, all of which closely respond to the dancer’s movements, creating otherwordly universes.

For at this point in aesthetics, the scene verges on the esoteric, rather than a mere classical scenography. It is one of the most inventive and creative works that I have ever been given the privilege of seeing. It has definitely entered my annals.

Luc Archambault, Westmount Magazine, 2017

EN (translated)
There is a perfect symbiosis of the body, sound and light, traveling from an aquatic universe full of poetry to that of an anguishing black hole, going through a fierce fight between a tamer and her lion, or a fight with oneself? A three-dimensional reality then takes shape while continuously metamorphosing into a perfect continuity.

FR (original):
On assiste à la fusion en parfaite symbiose d’un corps, d’une musique et d’un visuel projeté, en voyageant d’un univers aquatique plein de poésie à celui d’un trou noir angoissant, en passant par un combat féroce entre un dompteur et son lion, ou bien un combat avec soi-même ? Une réalité tridimensionnelle prend alors forme, tout en se métamorphosant continuellement dans une parfaite continuité – réalité qui finalement s’avère être celle que nous vivons quotidiennement en réagissant au moindre son et à la moindre sollicitation visuelle.

Sors-tu, Mélanie Vibrac, 05.2017

“Transcending an aesthetic and seeking to make the imperceptible palpable" is the mantra of Navab and Kitamura. The invisible scenography and the spatialized sound put the body at the center of this proposal. From the meeting of the Japanese choreographer and the Montreal media alchemist, a fascinating and trans-sensory world emerges. Like waves, visuo-sonic architectures emerge and make the dancer's micro-movements disappear in an ocean of micro-intelligences.

mon(theatre), 04.2017

Imaginez une scène énorme, avec une danseuse en solo au centre, de la musique électroacoustique qui réagit en temps réel aux mouvements, et une projection vidéo interactive à la grandeur du plancher. Les trois médiums fusionnés du début jusqu’à la fin.
C’était très convaincant, notamment la conception sonore, pour parler de ce que je connais. Elle était toujours proportionnelle à l’accélération du corps dans un espèce de feedback son/mouvement. On a eu droit à du vent, de l’eau, des itérations dans les basses, des chuchotements en évanescence perpétuelle.
Parfois, l’artiste dansait sur un tapis d’étoiles filantes. Ou se faisait absorber par un trou noir avant d’aboutir dans un monde aquatique surréel.

Nathan Giroux, Les Meconnus, 04.2017


EN (translated)

From this body that communicated with its virtual environment to produce such mesmerizing visual and sound projections, I remained completely captived. The gestures were beautiful and enriched by responsive media that reverberated on the stage. I must confess that, with this dancer, I would have accepted to go to the confines of the universe. “Magic!”

FR (original)

Subjugué, serait le qualificatif approprié pour me décrire durant toute la durée de la présentation qui, selon le feuillet, "Transcender une esthétique et chercher à rendre palpable l'imperceptible". De ce corps qui communiquait avec son environnement virtuel pour nous produire des projections visuelles et sonores fort bien réussis, je suis resté complètement captif. Les gestes étaient beaux et tout amplifiés par les capteurs qui réverbéraient sur la scène. Je dois confesser qu'avec cette interprète, j'aurais accepté aller dans les confins de l'univers."Magique !”

Sur les pas du spectateur. 04.2017

VIDEOS

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