Outside the realms of theJust DanceandDance Dance Revolutionvideo games, it’s hard to imagine the words ‘dance’ and ‘gaming’ in the same context. That was at least until the artistic director of Stalker Theatre, David Clarkson, began working on his latest piece,Encoded. In this interactive 3D performance, audiences are treated to an immersive and mind-bending experience that takes the ancient tradition of dance and thrusts it into the 21st century.
Considering the vast differences between the mediums of dance and technology, it’s difficult to comprehend how Clarkson came up with the original concept. “The initial inspiration partly came from the desire for me to work with my nephew, Sam Clarkson,” the director explains. “He had been doing some really interesting stuff with photogrammetry, which is the process of taking photographs of real environments and turning them into three-dimensional, cubic models.
“Sam was designing a game called Casebook,” Clarkson continues, “and I was intrigued by some of the parallels between what he was working with and what I was playing with. In theatre, in a very simple sense, there is the tradition of mask, but I started to become interested in masking objects, buildings and the full human body.”
For those who have reservations about combining a traditional artistic medium with such a hyper form of technology, so did the artistic director at first. “I had always been a little resistant when it came to working with technology and I just thought that maybe it was time to plunge on in and give it a go.”
The involvement of a game designer in a dance piece will excite the cockles of many a gamer geek heart. Not that Clarkson’s a gamer himself. “I’m not a gamer, but [Sam] would show me what he was working on and I just saw all the possibilities for creating very interesting and immersive spaces in a theatrical and dance context,” he says.
“It’s opened up a whole field of creativity because there are very few people working on the crossover between live theatre and gaming and interactive technologies. Everyone knows the Xbox, but applying it to a live performance is unique.
“You’re working with a very ancient tradition that goes back thousands of years, pressed hard up against new technology. But there is a possible dialogue between a lot of the concepts and ideas, which I find very exciting.”
Even those who aren’t particularly interested in technological innovation are sure to be spellbound by the way in which it is woven into Encoded. “There are three main pieces of technology that we use, and they’re all innovative in their own ways,” Clarkson explains. “The first is something we call a ‘virtual costume’. They involve very small projectors that are mounted on a frame, similar to a puppet. They project images onto the performers’ bodies as they move.
“Then there’s the fluid simulation, which is interactive. With a close collaboration with Creativity and Cognition Studios at UTS we use a type of physics engine that emulates fluids, which is triggered by the movement of the dancers.
“The other thing that we’re doing is capturing an environment, photographing it or [making] a 3D model of it, and then [projecting] it back on itself whilst tweaking and playing with it.”
SeeEncodedattheRiverside Theatre, Parramatta fromThursday October 23 to Saturday October 25, tickets online.
