movement – space – architecture: On the resurrection of the body in interactive virtual environments
Presentation and performance by Jenny Coogan, Sabine Fichter and Klaus Nicolai as part of the Hellerau 100plus symposium (11th until 13th Sept 2009)


12th September 2009, 15.30 until 17.00 hrs
movement – space – architecture:
On the resurrection of the body in interactive virtual environments
Dr. Klaus Nicolai, cultural scientist (TMA Hellerau), Prof. Jenny Coogan, choreographer,
Lecture and performance followed by panel discussion

laboratory of TMA Hellerau, GebäudeEnsemble Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau
Block D
Moritzburger Weg 67
01109 Dresden

movement – space – architecture: On the resurrection of the body in interactive virtual environments
Prof. Jenny Coogan and Dr. Klaus Nicolai


This segment of the Symposium consists of three parts.
Part 1: Workshop, with everyone, leader Jenny Coogan
Part 2: Performance with Jenny Coogan and Sabine Fichter
Part 3: Lecture, Dr. Klaus Nicolai

“Tell me and I’ll forget;
show me and I may remember;
involve me and I’ll understand.”

Part 1: Workshop, with everyone, leader Jenny Coogan
Following the teaching of the Chinese proverb, the first part asks for the active participation of the “audience” as movers. Within simple and playfully constructed special and temporal parameters, we will engage in an architectural experience where the medium of this exploration is the movement. Formal elements of architectural structure will be experienced in bodily motion: the embodied self as living architecture, creative, spontaneous, communicative. We will begin our experiment in the symposium`s lecture hall and will conclude the experiment in the virtual environment of the TMA Lab.

Part 2: Performance with Jenny Coogan and Sabine Fichter
The second part of the session is a dance performance with Jenny Coogan and Sabine Fichter. The composition, performed in the virtual environment of the TMA Lab explores not only the interactivity of sound and visual image with the moving self, but also explores the phenomenon of thresholds in an embodiment of the architectural space.

Part 3: Lecture, Dr. Klaus Nicolai
Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau e.V. (TMA) have been producing and presenting representative developments in the field of interactive performances and installations in the festival theatre of Hellerau since 2001. TMA have organised workshops for art and media technology with a focus on interactive environments since that date. TMA has been operating a laboratory for the development and testing of interactive virtual environments in the building complex of Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau since 2006. The network project “European Tele-Plateaus” by TMA is currently funded by the European Union. This showcase project provides audio-visual real-time encounters between humans in Madrid, Prague, Norrköping and Dresden via internet on the basis of a net-camera-motion-sensing system. The performance work in interactive and virtual environments ties in with new technologies similar to the revolution of the stage set by Adolphe Appia in the former Hellerau Institute for Rhythm the beginning of the 20th century.


Hellerau 100plus (11th until 13th September 2009)
Vision of Life Reform – Hellerau Learnings
Interdisciplinary symposium in the garden town of Hellerau with lectures, performances, workshops and panel discussions etc. by Christine Ax, Prof. Peter Bernhard, Prof. Jenny Coogan, Prof. Hans-Werner Graf, Prof. Gunter Henn, Dr. Maik Hosang, Prof. Yamana Jun, Dr. Leopold Klepacki, Dr. Klaus Nicolai