Kinetica

Performed by Katsutoshi Mizukawa (Dance)

"Kinetica" is a work for a dancer and an interactive multimedia system, consisting of three networked Macintosh computers. A dancer on stage realizes a dance improvisation in front of the screen where the animated computer generated image is projected. The dancer listens to the electroacoustic sound and controls the computer synthesized sound diffused in the hall. One of the three computers detects the dancer's movements and position on the stage using the video analysis program SoftVNS that was implemented as a set of Max objects. The SoftVNS objects convert the dancer's motion into numbers in the Max patch. These data, along with cues, are sent to the two other computers via ethernet using OpenSoundControl, and the interaction among a dancer, computer generated sound and projected images is realized. Responding to the incoming data from the computer running SoftVNS, various computer sound synthesis and signal processing techniques such as subtractive synthesis, formant synthesis, granular sampling, and harmonizing are realized with SuperCollider 2. The computer for sound also controls the image processing sending data to the other computer via ethernet. The computer running DIPS generates 2D and 3D animated graphic images in real-time. These images are projected to the screen behind the stage with the dancer's silhouette.