Łódź: “From Cunningham to dancing avatars” workshop on new technologies in dance and international scientific symposium

The workshops and symposium will take place at the Grand Theatre in Łódź at Gen. Henryka Dąbrowskiego Square. The schedule is as follows:

Sunday 1.12.2024
10.00-18.00
Workshop by Armando Menicacci and Nicolas Berzi www.studiosit.ca / Big Ballet Studio

ISADORA

Introduction to computer programming for stage creation and streaming in Isadora for real-time interactive management of video, sound and light. Each participant will acquire basic practical skills in Isadora 4.02 in order to manage digital media (video, sound, lights and sensors) in real time. Participants will also study Isadora’s new streaming and live webcasting features, enabling remote interpreters to perform together in synchronised audio and video within the same image, while broadcasting the result live on any web platform.

The workshop is aimed at dancers, choreographers and other practitioners interested in developing their knowledge of interactive working tools in dance. The workshop is tailored to the participants’ technical experience and practical needs.

Armando Menicacci, PhD: researcher, artist and teacher. His work takes the form of visual, performative productions centred around the relationship between art, expressive physicality and technology. He obtained a master’s degree in musicology in Rome and a PhD in the relationship between contemporary dance and digital technologies at the University of Paris 8, where he founded and directed the Médiadanse laboratory from 1999 to 2009. From 2015 to 2018, he was a professor in the dance department at UQAM (Montreal), where he created the dance and new technologies program. He has also taught in Brazil, Turkey, England and France. He is co-founder of the LAVI Laboratory (Laboratoire Arts Vivants Interdisciplinaires), funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation in 2019, dedicated to the research and creation of dance at the intersection of science and technology.

Nicolas Berzi, PhD: a creative researcher in the performing arts and interdisciplinarity, director, author, playwright, audiovisual designer and producer, Nicolas Berzi has been developing collective, hybrid and technological stage writing for over fifteen years. After completing a master’s degree in philosophy, he founded the multidisciplinary creative company Artiste Inconnu (Montreal, 2013), of which he is still general and artistic director, and with which he wrote, directed and produced numerous performances. In his doctoral and post-doctoral research, his creative laboratories and his professional productions, Nicolas Berzi is fully committed to the deployment of hybrid practices and the integration of new media into traditional stage writing.

In 2021 Nicolas Berzi cofounded Studio SIT (studiosit.ca) in Montreal with Armando Menicacci. This non-profit organization is devoted to develop new technologies for the live and digital arts, while also supporting artists.

Monday 2.12.2024
10.00-14.00
Workshop Rebecca Evans / Small Ballet Studio

VR and MR in choreography

Digital Dance Choreographer Rebecca Evans (Pell Ensemble) and Artist/Creative Technologist Clemence Debaig (Unwired Studio) invite you for an afternoon filled with inspiring talks, a hands-on workshop, and thought-provoking discussions around the choreographic possibilities of emerging technologies focused on virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and motion capture. Throughout the session, there will be opportunities to experience and play with motion capture technologies and dance in a virtual reality headset, explore choreographic thinking for digital making, and engage in informal discussions to exchange findings and ideas. This workshop is ideal for artists, choreographers, and technologists interested in exploring and understanding the choreographic possibilities within VR, MR, and digital space. As well as programmers, arts organizations etc., who would like to understand further how to support these new processes of making. No prior experience in motion capture or VR or dance is required ­- just an open mind and curiosity for the possibilities at the intersection of dance and technology.

Rebecca Evans has created work using interactive and immersive technologies combined with dance since 2014 in the UK and abroad. She explores how digital and movement offer ways to appreciate our mutual dependency as part of a human, environmental and technological ecology, speculating on new futures and ways of being. This is underpinned by a neurodiverse perspective considering different intelligences and ways of sensing. She is currently a Studio Wayne McGregor Resident 6 Artist and a 2018/2019 Studio Wayne McGregor Questlab Network artist.  She holds in MA in Immersive and Extended Realities from UWE Bristol and has been visiting lecturer at University of Bristol, Bath Spa University and University of Bedfordshire.  Commissions include 2Faced Dance, The Vaults, Bedford Creative Arts, Knowle West Media Centre, DanceEast and London Borough of Culture.  With work shown at Frequency Festival, Athens Digital Arts Festival, Digital Bodies Festival and Art*VR (Grand Jury Prize Winner 2024).

10.00-14.00
Workshop by Stefano d’Alessio/ Big Ballet Studio

Visualisation / Multimedia

In this workshop, participants learn how to connect a performer’s body to visuals and sounds, focusing on intuitive, embodied interaction. Instead of relying on screens, knobs, or buttons, you’ll control audio-visuals through body movements and voice in real-time, using simple cameras and microphones. Hands-on practice includes working on your laptop, moving, and engaging with interactive tools. We will use MAX (cycling74.com), Participants will receive a library of pre-coded modules to minimize programming and maximize experimentation with this technology.

Stefano D’Alessio is a New Media artist and composer, lives and works in Vienna (Austria). He creates interactive performances and installations, combining visuals, sound, physical computing and performance through programming. His research addresses the digitization of the human in new technologies, virtual representations of the “real” and the distortions and perceptive amplifications caused by them. His work involves the human body as a subject for analyzing, coding, and decoding processes of the real/physical, into digital/abstract, questioning the ephemeral limits between machine and body, artificial intelligence and consciousness. With a degree in Visual Art and Theatre at the IUAV University of Venice, Stefano D’Alessio is regularly teaching new media for interactive arts with Klaus Obermaier, at bachelor, master, and post-graduate master courses at the IUAV University and at the Linz University of Arts. Since 2010 he regularly collaborates with Martina Menegon and Klaus Obermaier on different art projects, furthermore, he realized music and interactive visuals for various artists, musicians, choreographers and theatre directors.

Monday 2.12.2024
14.15-18.15
Symposium Ecology of new technologies in dance and choreography
Curator: dr Joanna Szymajda, Art Instytut PAN / Theatre VIP Salon

The influence of technology on dance aesthetics dates back to the early twentieth century. Starting with the first experiments of the Dadaists with projected images in dance (René Clair’s film in Jean Börlin’s 1924 ballet Relâche), film and video became an important element of stage performances. The work of Merce Cunningham in particular has contributed to the development of new concepts of dance performance based on the use of digital technologies. In 1989, he used the computer programme Life Forms for the first time, with which he realised twenty performances. He was also the first to introduce virtual silhouettes of dancers onto the stage (Biped, 1999, a performance presented as part of the Łódź Ballet Meetings in 2023 by the Lyon Opera Ballet). Therefore, while new technologies are not a complete novelty in choreography, in the context of rapidly advancing technological change and the emergence of new tools and environments such as VR and artificial intelligence, their function and meaning is changing. We would like to look at the role they have played so far in the world of dance, but also the future challenges and threats, including ecological ones, resulting from their use.

The conference brings together artists and academics. Admission is open to everyone, especially male and female artists and students of the University of Łódź and Technical University of Łódź.

14.15-14.20 Opening

14.20-14.40 dr Regina Lissowska-Postaremczak, UAM Poznań
The role of technology in Merce Cunningham’s work and its impact on the development of world choreography

14.40-15.10 dr Armando Mecinacci, Uniwersytet Montrealski
Digital tools and artificial intelligence in the work of a choreographer today

15.10-15.40 dr hab. Agnieszka Jelewska, UAM Poznań
Is artificial intelligence green? On the costs of using new technologies in the performing arts.

15.40-16.00 coffee break

16.00-16.20 Iza Szostak, choreographer, dancer
On the experience of creating choreography in a VR Reality environment

16.20-16.40 Kaya Kołodziejczyk, choreographer, dancer
Choreographer at the IRCAM laboratory

16.40-17.30 panel discussion
With the participation of all the speakers and Stefano d’Alessio and Rebecca Evans

17.30-18.15 Closing lecture: Prof. Ryszard Kluszczyński, Head of the Department of New Media and Digital Culture at the Faculty of Philology, University of Łódź, Head of the Transdisciplinary Arts and Science Research Centre, University of Łódź
New technologies in body and movement art – history and contemporary challenges