encounterBLOG // 19 November, Monday

today is a resting day, there are no performances, but i will take a walk around the studios and exhibition areas and share some impressions of the installation by Mulleras Dance Company.

96 Details (96 Modules). films/interactive installation

[created by Magali and Didier Mulleras; video/multimedia: Nicolas Grimal, Didier Mulleras; music/sound design: Didier Mulleras; Dancers: Magalie Viguier-Mulleras, Severine Prunera, Elisabeth Nicol]

10:40 am

a sunny brisk cold morning, winter light, inducing a walk along the pond, up the small hill past the forgotten houses of Hellerau, then down hill towards the market square, hardly any people out here and the shopkeepers i talk to are all in a mood of restrained pessimism. so i buy fruit and walk back up the hill, past the old workshops/craft shops, and reach the Festspielhaus. today is departure time, Magruder leaving with Beacham, Boddington ready to fly back to London and then she’s be on to Lisbon (Te-Dance), she is global traveller and just attended an event in Prague with the sexy name “MutaMorphosis” how do people come up with their titles, and our staff now fills the room and we make coffee. there is a crew of volunteers, Andra, Anett, Anja, Bianca, Christine, Maritta, and we work together in a shared office here in the west wing. Magruder leaves the room to make it to the airport, he carries a large white box under his arm (his new turntable, he tells me). Magruder likes to play games with the new Wii.

15:48

i am introduced to Toshiko Oiwa, who will dance in Movement A on Wednesday night. she tells me she is Japanese but does not live anywhere in particular. currently: France. i ask whether i can come to a rehearsal, and yes, tonight – if the stage floor is ready – at 18:00 i can visit.

17:09

what is blogging? i need to develop a different style from the previous days. the texts are too long.

so my commentary on Mulleras is short today, brisk and cold as the wind.

on the lower right hand side of the video projection 96 Details there is a floating rubik’s cube. it spins. on a table there is a mouse, and with it you can click on the cube and it divides into 9 fields and inside the square fields there are round circles, and some are illuminated when you click them and they lead you to a module that is a video of the Mulleras company. some are dances and some are documentary or experimental films and some are single screen while others are multiplied and arranged as symmetrical/diametrical quadruplets.

the single screen dancevideos seem to be 5 or six minute films of multimedia or interactive dance performances. the quadrupled film-boxes show movement images and dance movement in an interactive interface allowing the viewer to affect the screening and modulate the image flow and the sound. there are control buttons and sliders that appear on either side of the screen, and these buttons allow you to change color, volume, speed, camera angle, etc. you can rotate the plane, use a mirror functions, and play around with the moving images. the arrangement of the ‘quadric’ allows for some nice perceptual puzzles, fragmenting and/or doubling the bodies that are performing.

17:37

in some instances, the doubling is a kind of video effect one knows from the camera, it is a mirroring that bisects the image and creates parallel inverse images.

the artists seem in love with digital effects. and as digital technology infiltrates the world of performance, Mulleras dance troupe seems to have embraced the notion of »choreographic electrons« which they experimented with, earlier, on the Internet during the past decade, and now more frequently in stand-alone installations. the current project is an on-going one that will last until 2009. so there are many more (potentially an infinite number) of details to come.

18:oo

time to leave the electrons. the installation is not interactive, unless you consider sliding sliders or pushing buttons a form of meaningul interactivity. the modules are fixed, and you have no influence on their lives.

(all image from Mulleras, 96 Details)

i shall look for Toshiko now.

johannes birringer

Tags: 2007, blog, CYNETart, cynetart2007, encounterBLOG, review