Ukiyo / premiere on June 1

[Yukihiko YOSHIDA]

Ukiyo / premiere on June 1p r e s s r e l e a s e



Ukiyo

[Moveable World]

by

dap-lab / dans sans joux

A choreographic installation

fusing dance, sound, design and digital projections

Monday, June 1, 19:oo Antonin Artaud Building, Brunel University, West London (UK)

Entry: free

Conceived and directed by Johannes Birringer, the installation features fashion design concepts by Michèle Danjoux with choreography by Katsura Isobe, Helenna Ren, Yiorgos Bakalos, Anne-Laure Misme, Rumiko Bessho, Mamen Rivera and Olu Taiwo; photography and digital designs by a group of collaborating artists including Paul Verity Smith, Takeshi Kabata, and Yukihito Obara; original music with real-time synthesis composed by Oded Ben-Tal, and live music by Caroline Wilkins and Kerry Yong, scenography by Johannes Birringer, and lighting design by Mamen Rivera.

UKIYO explores the layers of perceptions in an audiovisual world that constantly shifts and fragments; the audience is invited to move in and aound the space which in its current version features five hanamichi (runways) and several movie screens. Dancers perform simultaneously with digital objects that are projected, and their sounds and voices are sampled and processed. The music and visual choreography for "Ukiyo" are designed for real-time gestural interaction to animate the feedback system and generative algorithms through with the Second Life virtual space and the performer movements are intertwined.

Loosely based on several haikus and Christian Kracht's utopian novel on the SwissAfrican Soviet Revolution of the early 1900s (Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten), and developed in online rehearsals with Japanese dancers and engineers creating a possible future "world" simulation of the cavernous Swiss sanctuary system in the inner Alps (“Réduit"), UKIYO challenges our fantasies and conceptions of past and future virtual worlds.

UKIYO is performed by an international cast of several performers whose work developed in online collaboration with digital artists in Tokyo, as part of a cross-cultural research venture in virtual environments directed by Birringer (Professor of Performance Technologies, DAP-Lab, Brunel School of Arts).

Website: http://people.brunel.ac.uk/dap/uikyo.html

&

http://www.dansansjoux.org



For further infornation, call + 44 (0)1895 267 343 Or email: [e-mail]

This project is supported by a PMi2/connect British Council research cooperation Awar; The Japan Foundation, IAPL 2009 conference. Bliss Trust/PRS Foundation, and The Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance at Brunel University

[Johannes Birringer]

Here a few images from the final rehearsals for UKIYO and the opening on June 1. We shall soon be uploading a brief film from the work, but the online preview is not ready yet. The first public screen version of the mixed reality installation is scheduled to be shown at SUBTLE TECHNOLOGIES 2009, the arts and science conference at Toronto, Canada (11 - 15 June, 2009).

[Johannes Birringer]

UKIYO/Moveable World (first version) was premiered at Antonin Artaud Centre, Brunel University, on June 1, 2009, on the opening night of the international IAPL meeting that took place in London that week (International Association of Philosophy and Literature).


The "choreographic installation" with its mixed reality performance of real dancers and virtual dancers (avatars) drew an audience of well over 150 people, and after the 45 minute installation a lively Q&A session took place within the installation space.

More information about this joint project (DAP-Lab/ dans sans joux and iNetDance Japan/Keio University), which will continue its second stage development in Japan later this year, will be made available here soon, along with filmic and photographic materials about our designs and performances.

A first diptych film installation version from the performance was featured at the 2009 Subtle Technologies Festival in Toronto, Canada, and subsequently traveled to Houston, TX.

For more information on the film presentation at Subtle Technologies, go to "UKIYO".

The films were shown on an evening performance night featuring artists, including Second Front, Alan Sondheim, Lynn Heller, Jeremy Bailey and Chris Chafe/Pauline Oliveros who either work extensively in Second Life/virtual environments or with online telematic performance transmissions.