The prerecorded tape will be a complex montage of both simple and sophisticated video technologies, all centered around visualizing a collection of metaphors, which illuminate the collaborators' versions of reality.
We will use doodles as signatures of the six collaborators, reflexive,
patterns as autobiographical introduction. Doodle categories will reflect the
concerns of the artists: movement doodles, music doodles, video doodles. Are
there cross-references between doodle forms (i.e. drawing doodles and movement
doodles), and how descriptive are these unconscious forms? Another repeating
image ist that of a digitally created, slowly turning room, with large picture
windows, each revealing different things outside the window. The whole image is
to be used as a set piece with musical setting and as a backdrop for foreground
dance movement; as well as a transition between various scenes.
A second window image uses the video screen to cut a hole to the outside world,
revealing dance outside the theatre. This dance is an example of a limitations
work which is defined by its pre-set limits. Maps are another graphic tool. One
is a map of the six collaborator's ancestor's migration to the US. Our view of
the map zooms into the individuals, flashing upon personal intersections.
The final step of this mapping is a set of lines and standard "map" symbols, which slowly grows towns, cities and a topography; revealing itself to be a palm-reader's map of a hand.
Continuing throughout 2 x 2 x 2 are a series of Macintosh-created
animations done by Joseph Prieboy. One is called the "Dance Analizing Machine"
- a satire on art and technology projects which uses the dance techniques of
the choreographers as a basis for this low-resolution animation.
A major dance sequence is the "car crash test", with the dancers striped and
numbered in a pseudo "crash-test" environment. A large scale video alteration
on live dance, will interact with on-stage dance commentary, looking for
meaning in simple movement, using scientific distance and time markers to
accentuate time and distance alteration, and relay an intensity of feeling.
An assemblage of socially complex word games is displayed through an
animated Scrabble-type game. Speaking the questions and some answers of this
puzzle are the artists, whose association to the riddle give its clues impact.
The impossible task of giving one word answers to the mysteries of life, here
is made comically simple.
This is combined with a skewed game of musical chairs. In this competitive
version of the game (which relates to the competivness of the art world, the
rejection of the creative life, the feelings of alienation and being "left
out", losing control), each player conveying a different artistic response when
they are eliminated.
One character is an inventor who pretends to make up what is
common-place, he re-invents his daily activities, how to walk, how to cook, how
to eat; as if he never saw a cup, dish or plate. The background for this
segment is a comic mix of discovers (both real and made-up) which is
interrupted by live camera close-ups of the character's inventions.
A Paintbox animation will be created to play with images of the six
collaborators, taking them back and forth through different ages opens a
sequence of children's questions about life. These questions seem to have
answers that only exist for us in a particular time age and place. The Quantel
paintbox work will be done in collaboration with Tom Lesser.
Wasted time is another theme we address, as directly related to the
audience. Incorporating footage recorded earlier, outside the Brucknerhaus,
characters are seen getting tickets and voicing pre-conceptions of the
evening's work, and delivering instant reviews of the program in progress. We
take the idea behind a Rube Goldberg machine and apply it to a larger range of
conditions. Movement becomes color, becomes sound, becomes picture. Based on
the sub-conscious confusion of three and red and "F" sharp, the concept of
"hearing blue"-based on "Scribin" color field tests, psychological and IQ
tests.
The final work will be a complex montage of both simple and sophisticated
techniques and technologies, all centered around visualizing a collection of
metaphors, which illuminate the collaborators' versions of reality.
