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1. Introduction. My Name is Olaf Meyer. Today I will speak about my journey
through dance and music and how that sparked my passion to develop video
as an expressive medium of communication beyond its current mainstream
use. I am currently at Last night I was asked what professionalism meant to me. I
think professionalism comes from truth and from doing what you love
doing with respect and thoughtfulness. Along the way I have developed hardware and software infrastructure
to facilitate experimentation with image. The philosophy behind the
development of this infrastructure has been to organize the infrastructure
so that it can be understood and reused by others as building blocks
as they experiment with image. So what is actually a very personal journey of experimentation,
has through the orginisation and development of the infrastructure,
become a public and possible commercial software package. I would like to start with an interview that appeared in 1998
on ABC TV. Here I introduce what got me interested in computer graphics
and live performance at dance parties. Video Duration: 4 minutes. 2. The idea of playing graphics is synonymous with the idea of
playing music. As with music, visuals can also help facilitate expression
and create an impression. In an improvised (live) performance of music a skilled musician
can explore his feelings and express them through the playing of his
musical instrument. His feelings are often a fused result of his environment,
his past experience and most importantly his present experience. The musical instrument has its effects on the environment through
the sound it produces and the performer is able to use the sound to
create an intricate impression without the use of words. What is it that allows music to carry feeling? Science has recently measured the effects of music on the body
especially the brain and the heart. There is a special power of certain
types of music that allows the brain waves and the heart waves to synchronise,
like the sound waveforms of two harmonious notes synchronise. It has been found that this synchronization of the heart and
brainwaves always happens when listening to the music of Mozart. This
effect is called the Mozart effect. It is my belief that feeling and
impressions can be communicated and explored through the use of rhythm
in a way much more subtle than words. When making love the rhythms we
find are direct and subconscious expressions of our inner feelings. In dance the music and our current internal state are fused
and explored through the rhythms created by ourselves through our bodies.
Dance, like music is another example of externalizing what is felt inside
by rhythms outside. Studies have found that adults and children as young as four
years of age are capable of assigning emotional labels to expressive
body movement, facial expressions, vocal expressions, and music. 3. Ok, so how do computer visuals fit in to this? Well we are all actually really good at using our eyes to read
emotion. In watching dance for example, we use our eyes to read expressive
body movement. In verbal language we use our ears, but we also use our
eyes at the same time to perceive gestures and facial expressions that
tell us just as much, if not more, about how the person is feeling than
mere words. Body gestures are perceived in a different way to how the words
are spoken. They are perceived on a more subconscious and intuitive
level, the level at which we read the underlying tone of voice, the
level where we perceive feeling and emotion. The difference between our perceptions of words opposed to
gesture could also be seen as the same difference in perception between
the lyrics in music and the beats and harmonies it contains. Ever since the discovery of hypnosis or its earlier term mesmerism
there has been a lot of research on the effects of rhythm on the brain.
Even before the west had heard of hypnosis, A product called the mind machine has been created out of the
scientific research into the effects of pulsating light rhythms on the
biorhythms of the brain. This machine will take you into a meditative
mind state and also makes you see psychedelic geometric patterns. When watching this next video I made in 1999 I want you to
watch for the visual rhythms, patterns, changes in rate, flow and movement
and see if you can notice any recognizable images; they are the visual
lyrics. 4.0 Why externalize our feeling and emotion? Why use such high tech systems to explore our internal feelings? Almost all of the younger generations in our society today
are influence a great deal by media outside their bodies. The nature
of our society often has us concentrating allot on all aspects of our
lives but the way we feel inside. Video (television media) is seen by
many as a further distraction and outside force of influence. I believe that it is only in the way we treat that media that
makes it a further distraction. Video can be used in a way more synonymous
with the use of music and dance to help us explore within. By interfacing visual elements to sound and the rhythms felt
within our bodies -giving those rhythms form within our external environment.
I believe we can use those formations to become more self aware of our
inner states of feeling and emotion. Possibly presenting benefits for
therapy and healing as well as relationships both business and private.
If a group of people would hook themselves into such a system.
Where each member’s inner state affects their environment by individual
light and sound patterns. What we originally may have thought of as
a collection of individual and unique inner states and rhythms may actually
fuse into harmony as each individual is influenced by the whole collection
of rhythms. Like the chanting of monks, each monk has his own individual
expression of the chant, but they fuse together in a unified sound field. Finally I want to show you some images of projects that have
taken me on this journey of exploring rhythm and internal states through
the use of body and image. Interactive
Dance Screen.
Paint images with time-embracing golden paint using your entire body. |