Extra and Extraction: The Myth of Static Geometry.
Extra and Extraction: The Myth of Static Geometry is a large scale performative installation of light, dance, sound, and video synthesis. It is a scientifically playful study of how three dimensional movement and sound can be used to affect a larger architectural environment. It is a collaboration between video artists Kevin Harris and Chad Eivins, Ashley Tate and members of the Ashleyliane dance company, and HCC artists Rich O'Donnell and Mike Murphy performing live sound synthesis.
The installation will begin by constructing a network of projection surfaces in the center room of the William A Kerr building. These surfaces will form the core infrastructure of the built environment and serve as a guide that dancers will use to navigate and interact with the electronic environment. Live camera feeds, placed in relation to the projections, will capture dancer's movement and feedback from overlapping projections. The camera feeds will then be processed and distributed through live video synthesis and image processing equipment. At this stage, frequency and amplitude of the live sound will be used to control video image parameters such as color, field rate filtering, contrast, and scan-line frequency, as well as the forms that result from dancer's movement.
The result will be a an investigation into constructing an environment characterized by electronic stimuli rediscovering its physical origins. By placing the projection planes in various angles and degrees of depth throughout the chosen environment, the video will take on a new life of dimensionality, not only becoming a relative variation of the movement, but a system allowing live sound and dance to coalesce into a complete sensory spectacle.
The William Kerr building is a perfect stage on which to execute this post-apocalyptic vision of image and sound. The location is at once vast, desolate, present, and vacant - the ideal combination of neutrality and intention for exploring the psychological affects of this kinetic architecture.
- Kevin Harris