Post 10: BODY MAPPING

    For the sake of efficiency and to cut down on the workload, I would like the same white costumes to be used in four different ways:
       1. With black light:

       2. With built in LED's:

       3. As shadows:

       4. Projected on:

     The first three are relatively easy to implement, the hard one is the fourth, projecting an image on a moving dancer. That will require not only mapping an image to the body, but doing it as the body changes shape and moves in 3D space, which will be quite a technical challenge. I can sort of envision the way to do it, but will definitely need technical help to make it work.  
      We will need an infrared camera to record the movement and body shape, feed that live video in the computer, process it on the fly applying colors and patterns, and project those back onto the dancer as it moves, with as little latency as possible. Live body mapping, sounds simple enough... May be with Mike's help...
    The best way may be to use the KINECT. This is what the Kinect actually sees, both a normal image and an Infra Red view:

     An interesting feature is the "Point Cloud" 3D view that can be moved in space:

Post 9: THE MUSIC

    I didn't post for a month while in Europe because my computer died, but I did spend some time thinking about the show, especially the music. In every piece I have done, the sound track has come first, and drives the images and movement.
   I love buying singles from iTunes rather than albums because there are usually only a couple of songs per album I really like. As I get older, I like to be surprised, and favor unusual sounds, exotic, original and exciting compositions more and more. But may be because my attention span is getting shorter, I find that even great songs are often too long, and that out of a 5 minutes song I like, I only REALLY like about a minute or so. Sometimes it's in the beginning, sometimes in the middle, sometimes at the end. It doesn't seem to matter whether the piece is classical, pop, jazz, or whatever, it usually seems too long...
   I would like the score for the show to be  relentlessly exciting, original, unusual, surprising, harmonious but sometimes dissonant.  I want to hear unexpected sounds and rythm changes, strange instruments, and unusual combinations of instruments, voices and sounds. Etherial counter tenor and booming bass voices, musical saw and bowed double bass, huge bass drums and pan flutes, jamaican steel drums and tubas...
   Ideally of course, the score would be completely original.