In this workshop, 16 (dance) filmmakers, artists, editors and choreographers will play with the dynamics of bodies, camera and interactive users. They learn to use the powerful and versatile Korsakow System (that has exciting new features for screen lay-outs!). They develop a screen-based or spatial interaction concept, and make a working prototype.
Workshop approach
The workshop is an action-packed 5-day process from 10.00 till 17.00 hours. The workshop takes place at Cinedans!
Every morning lectures and presentations bring in new ideas and knowledge. Every afternoon participants work on their own projects, coached by high level trainers, and helped by smart assistants. One special technician will be present to help realize various sensor based installation ideas.
The workshops works towards a presentation of some projects in the context of the Cinedans Festival, this final presentation will take place on Saturday July 5 between 12.00 and 13.00 hours at Rialto Movie center in Amsterdam.
Material and tools
Participants can bring up to 30 minutes of footage on FireWire harddisk, or USB stick or dvd rom, preferably as Quicktime movies. There will be the possibility to shoot footage during the workshop, to a limited extent.
Primary workshop tool will be the Korsakow System. Some ideas for sensor based installations can be realized during the workshop as well. All necessary equipment and software will be available at the workshop.
Trainers, lecturers and assistants
Besides these great trainers and lecturers we have an outstanding team of highly trained and very experienced workshop assistants: Louise Berg, Amy Patton and Julieanne Mia Eason.
Workshop Report
Dance Film in Space
Until 1928 all films were dance films...
The best subject for film is dance. Both are about image, movement and action.
The camera was the first tool to be able to preserve dance.
For the Interactive Dance Film Workshop @ Cinedans a group of 16 international film makers, choreographers and dancers met up in Amsterdam for 5 days to get in touch with the latest edition of the Korsakow System an application used to create databased interactive films, which huge visual possibilities. As film maker and trainer in this workshop David Hinton pointed out: film is capable of complexity in time, but not in space. Korsakow is capable of complexity in time AND space!
To be able to contextualize the workshop project not only on the screen, but also in a wider physical context, Dirk van Oosterbosch gave an highly inspiring introduction on sensor based electronics on wednesday. He showed different possibilties of input, working with pressure- light- or other sensors, connected to an Arduino and a hacked keyboard. This way the input of the sensors could be translated to Korsakow choices for a running Korsakow project. The trickiest bit are callibrating the sensors: deciding what range of light or pressure input should actually amount to a choice in Korsakow...
On the first and second day dance film director David Hinton lectured about the relations between choreography, camera, space and film and the development of dance films, using material as varied as sequences of nature documentaries on birds and clips from Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers ( that have a quite sophisticated way of using the performance space on camera!)
Simon Fildes discussed his HyperChoreography project, that explores the crossroads between dance film and hyper media. The latest project inspired by the notion of HyperChoreography is Move-Me by Simon and his partner Katrina McPherson. In a sort of video booth, users can select a little choreographic score of several well known choreographers, that they can than perform themselves. This performance is recorded and sent to the Move-Me site. Dance film meets web 2.0.
Florian Thalhofer (maker of the Korsakow system) then discussed the ways in which the Korsakow System allows him to tell stories; followed by a brainstorming session on ideas of the participants.
Nearly all participants brought their own dance footage (shot at the flanks of the Etna, in the favela's of Rio de Janaeiro, in the cellars of the PostCS building, in the woods around Canterbury, on some rocky beach in Britain, etcetera.
Everybody used the Korsakow System with its major new possibility to completely design the screen layout, with a very straighforward visual tool. This allowed every project to have its own custom made interface. Some participants started with an idea for a screenlayout / interactive interface and then shot footage tailormade for that interface (look at Goran Turnseks' project for instance)
The trainers Louise Berg, Amy Patton, Julieanne Eason and Jakob Schillinger gave advice throughout the workshop and helped develop the projects.
As last-day surprise lecturer appeared light and stage designer Philip Bussmann who gave an insight into his workprocesses for the opera based on David Lynch's Lost Highway, his collaborations with The Wooster Group, and his work for William Forsythe, as well as autonomous work.
On the very sunny Saturday afternoon that closed of the workshop, many people came to the presentation in Rialto Cinema. We counted almost 80 persons. 5 of the most diverse and estasblished projects were presented.
Iwona Hrynczenko's In Motion
The first project In the Middle of Nowhere by Klara Elenius was very sweet project with a crisp and intimate feel, a well executed interactive videoclip.
After Klara, Iwona Hrynczenko showed her mosaic of untrained movements In Motion it also had a beautiful soundtrack, this really was a very nicely done film. Then Yvonne van den Akker with her material shoot in Rio de Janeiro called Letters from Brazil, it was about dancing and playing kids in Rio's favela's.
Tiziana Cantarella's Dance with your Silence
Tiziana Cantarella made a gorgeous film named Dance with your Silence, the material was made in Sicily close to the Etna, a really dreamy place where she made her quiet dance film.
The project made by Goran Turnsek, DanceON was a project designed around cross shaped movie interface. Parts of his own filmed body and limbs placed in this shape could be moved around like a sliding puzzle, thus creating various oddly constructed bodies.
