Christian Möller (D), born 1959, studied architecture in Frankfurt and at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna with Gustav Peichl. Has had his own architecture firm and laboratory for electronic media and software development since 1990. Associate at the Institute for New Media at the Städelschule in Frankfurt since 1991.

"Electro Clips" (production: TAT/Theater am Turm Frankfurt, Ars Electronica Linz) is an installation for ballet which enables the dancers to interact with light and sound directly. The visual and acoustic symbols which ballet normally uses as givens are produced and influenced in "Electro Clips" by the dancer Stephen Galloway, his movements and choreography. A parallel environment of sound, light and movement will be produced. The dancer assumes the role of a director in that he can use the changing functions of the sensors distributed about the stage area like a keyboard in manipulating the sound and light.

"Electro Clips" utilizes various types of light sources for manipulating the sound. They can be classified in two groups. Passive lighting (fixed and mobile) from spotlights which can be focused. The rays of these spotlights are unfiltered. Active lighting from flames and projected images. The brightness produced by these sources is variable. When lighting a scene with passive sources of light, the dancer's movements alone produce the environment's audio reactions. If the scene is lit actively, the dancer manipulates an acoustic background which is already reacting. The acoustic background, which reacts abruptly and violently to the bright flare of a match, becomes calmer as the match burns down and then quiet when it burns out.

The projectors' "filters" (images) - exchangeable in the case of the slide projector, though static and mobile with the video projector - modulate differentiated audio compositions by means of their distribution of light and shade on the sensor fields. The composition, adjusted to the voltage during the production, is a constant maximum orchestration. The sound tracks are assigned individual sounds, text clusters, rhythms and melodies. The sound effects during the performance will be generated by the actions of the dancers and the variable light sources with regard to the system's sensors. This will be a selection made interactively from the running maximum orchestration. Six independent loudspeaker systems will transmit the selected total sound tracks into the room in three dimensions.

Technical Background

HW: PC