2011/05/15
2011/05/13
Children dance a story
This morning at breakfast a house mate tells me the story of The King, The Mice and The Cheese. When I Google to find it I find this home video of children starting to dance it:
Here’s a REVIEW of the story by Josef W. (age 8).
2011/05/12
Google Doodle, animated dance
Yesterday’s Google Doodle was a beautiful animation. I was pretty busy and didn’t get a chance to find out anything about it. After asking friends I found out (THANK YOU ALL) that:
It was made by Ryan WoodWard to reflect the dance style of Martha Graham.
The Martha Graham Center site has lots of information.
The site Animated Google Doodle Honors 117th Birthday of Dancer Martha Graham is where you can download animation key frames.
Someone has put music to it.
Someone explains (in German) technical information about it.
2011/04/08
Visualising our ecosystem
KRILL feature in the Hyperion Project, a beautiful animated interactive interface of the marine ecosystem:
Hyperion Project from Oisin Prendiville on Vimeo.
Hyperion is an animated generative installation; a triptych of mutually supporting digital environments that also rely on, and react to, sensor-based information received from the real-world environment. In addition to exploring new methods of data visualisation and generative programming techniques, Hyperion is also representative of new global digital biological systems and technologies.
Modelled as individual links in a food chain using a real-world biological marine ecosystem as a behavioural blueprint, the environments of Eos, Selene and Helios form a circuit reflecting the interdependency of such biological systems. Created with Macromedia Flash and utilising sensor and networking technology, each environment relies on the others for sustenance, in addition to reacting to stimuli received from the installation’s real-world physical environment.
The members of the group behind the project are Briana Hegarty, John Ryan, Deirdre Williams, and myself. Hyperion Project blog, accessed 8 April 2011
Another beautiful animation is The Garden of Ecos:
In this animated short, animals and plants are living peacefully together in a large garden until predators attack and ravage their habitat, stealing food and destroying plants. This creates an imbalance that leads to war. A fable that poetically describes how conflicts between 2 different groups in the same community can upset the natural balance of an ecosystem.
The film Atonement describes human impacts on an ecosystem.
Mountain Movement – Vue Redux from Jerry A. Smith, Ph.D. on Vimeo. “>Mountain Movement
This is a combination 3D and 2.5D Vue virtual composition. The original model, including animated ecosystem, was composed of over 2 million polygons, far too many to render in any reasonable time. I kept the near field objects as 3D, but renders the farther elements in multiple layers. The next is a hybrid Vue composition. Final color correction was done in After Effects. Jerry A. Smith 2010
2011/03/28
LESSONS and REFLECTIONS
Here I share lesson plans and reflections on my DRAWING MOVEMENT WORKSHOPS, acknowledge the sources of my methods and invite comments.
LESSONS and REFLECTIONS are published under a Creative Commons Share Alike license. This means that you are free to use and adapt the methods to your practice. However, in any publications, acknowledgement of this URL must be made in reference to these methods: http://lisaroberts.com.au/blog/?p=664 By acknowledging this URL you automatically acknowledge my sources.
The theory behind my practice is that physical and biological forces shape us and our environment and that drawing movement can visualise body knowledge of these forces. This is ancient knowledge that is important to recover in this time of need to reconnect.
Absolute Dance, a primal form created by Rudolf von Laban, inspires my preference for body rhythm as the catalyst for drawing.
[Laban] set out from the idea that we should be able to perceive rhythm not only through our ears; that our eyes should be just as capable of perceiving it. When we see the waves of the sea from afar, so that we cannot hear their sounds, we yet fully take in their rhythm. Why should we not have the same delight, he argued, from seeing a dancer? Why should not the dance, like a moving sculpture, be sufficient in itself? It was on these theories that he based the Absolute Dance (Gertrud Bodenwiesser, The New Dance, pp.69-70).
***
Materials:
A5 recycled paper sheets (clipped to A5 wooden drawing boards) and clutch pencils (with large soft leads) are made available to workshop participants.
***
Enter the space
Walk through the space, aware of your breath as you consciously focus on leaving behind the physical experience of getting here (by foot, bike, car or public transport) (Ref. Christine McMillan, 2008).
What changes do you note in your breathing?
Now imaginatively enter and explore a wide white page that is bound within the 3 dimensions of this place – its length, breadth and height.
Focus on your feet connecting to the ground through the weight of your whole body.
Imagine marking the ground with inky feet, drawing a scale that ranges between extremely light and heavy.
Use other body parts to draw lines of different weight through all the dimensions of your imagined 3D page.
Think of your lines as drawing the 4th dimension of time.
Gradually find stillness. Close your eyes. Breathe. Imagine yourself now within a new clear space. You have moved through the imagined white page and into the reality of the present. Open your eyes.
Take your drawing board and pencil and, without looking at the paper, slowing walk and draw a line that spirals clockwise from the centre. Allow the weight of your pencil on the paper to trace the weight of your body on the ground. Your lines will reflect this experience of movement.
2011/03/15
New
New drawings are inspired by Barbara Cuckson, director of the Rozelle School of Visual Arts in Sydney. Barbara’s training was with the legendary Gertrud Bodenwiesser, who was in turn a student of Rudolf Laban.
In Barbara’s classes I learn to dance with primal forms that were used to develop The New Dance.