TRYPTICHON

dance performance for locative media environments

dance / sound / video performance within a live locative media environment, shown at pixelACHE festival, Kiasma Theatre Helsinki, DMZ London.

TRyPTiCHON takes place in a triangular space between Helsinki’s Parliament House, Tuomiokirkko [the Lutheran Cathedral] and Kiasma Theatre. Steps are a prominent feature of these buildings and are used as the spatial context for the piece.

After visitors of TRyPTiCHON are settled in the Kiasma, the roaming performer (Gavin) leaves on a journey, during which he writes texts in one of three modes: internal space (my world), shared space (our world), external space (their world). These modes could also be described in terms of verb conjugation as 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person. The roamer’s written messages are tagged with positional data (latitude and longitude as reported by GPS) and sent to the control desk at Kiasma, where the data is visualised and sonified in an intimate surround-AV environment. Meanwhile, a dancer interprets and narrates the three modes of physical and emotional space through her movement. The live data feed from the roamer is juxtaposed with archived data from other walks in the same neighbourhood, performed over the PixelAche week by other roamers.
From the epicentre within the projection tent, the audience experiences their physical and social environment in multiple layers fed by the roamer and dancer conduits.

Our setup consists of a GPRS-enabled PDA, a GPS unit, G4 laptops running Max, a PA and projectors.
TRyPTiCHON uses a custom programmed server which receives TCP messages from the GPS-enabled handheld device via GPRS and translates them into the OSC (Open Sound Control) protocol, a protocol that can be understood by applications such as MAX/MSP/Jitter and Supercollider.
The TRyPTiCHON server translates the following data from the GPS units into OSC:
* UserID: to distinguish the roamers
* PerformanceMode: each roamer sees the neighbourhood from three different perspectives (modes), writes at various locations, and tags the text with the mode being used.
* Longitude & Latitude: The position of the performer
* Speed: Speed of the performer
* Course over Ground

TRyPTiCHON dance performance for a live locative media environment
by manu / mukul / muth. with: Hanna Ylitepsa (choreography and dance). Gavin Starks (roaming narrator). Camalo Gaskin (costume and projection tent design)
featuring walks through Helsinki by John Hopkins, Nick Grindell, Hermanni Ylitepsa, Voytec Mejor, Mariko Montpetit, Mikko Karjalainen and others