CN | Extinction I'm still here

Extinction I'm still here

In 2017, right before the start of the fourth semester, we had the chance to work in an interdisciplinary team towards interactive visuals for a dance production. We worked together tightly with the dancers, directors and musicians over a two-week span. Through workshops, brainstorming sessions and of course dancing we developed ideas for the final installations included in the play. As the main theme of the production was climate change we decided to work with metaphorical traces we leave behind.

We used a Kinect to track the dancers' movement from above and project a trace of light behind them wherever they step. The visuals were included right in the middle of the piece while it was shown at the Rote Fabrik in Zürich.

Credit

Project by
Aurelian Ammon, Carlo Natter

Mentors
Luke Franzke

Video
Flavia Reinhard, Matyas Fabian

Concept and Choreography
Saar Magal

Date
February 2017

Zurich University of the Arts, Department Design, Interaction Design

Fields: Spatial Design, Embodied Interaction, Light Installation, Performance

Read more about Extinction I'm …

Due to the short timeframe, the project had to be realised in we had to work around a few technical limitations with the Kinect and projector. However, it provided an interesting challenge in figuring out how to get the Kinect close enough to the floor for it to be able to project the dot matrix on the floor. Another challenge was to find a projector with the power to show the visuals in full fidelity. Going through the process of making the visuals they used to be quite a bit more detailed but realising the technical limitations we had to change course and redesign our visuals to fit the hardware constraints. Through this process, I feel the visuals have improved drastically as they became more clear for a first-time audience. And the framerate improvements were, of course, nice as well.