I’m just back from China, and reeling with all the sights, sounds, smells and tastes that the last two weeks brought. It’s an incredible country at a remarkable time, and although I’ve hardly scratched the surface with two visits in the last year, I’m beginning to feel attached to the place. This must be in part due to the warmth, enthusiasm and generosity of the people I’ve met there: the last week was no exception. I was in Chongqing for a 4-day forum on ‘Transforming Public Spaces’, run by the *deep breath* Cultural and Education Section of the British Consulate General in China. A day of discussion, followed by a 48 hour workshop where 4 groups worked towards a final day of presentations was an intensive format, but it seemed to be a challenge taken on with enthusiasm by all involved. Each group was assigned one of Chongqing’s many and wildly varied public spaces to work with – for my group, that was People’s Square.

It’s an incredible space – 25,000 sq. m in all, boldly claiming one of the only flat spaces in this vertical city between the Great Hall of the People and the Three Gorges Museum. As well as a tourist attraction and icon of the city, it’s an outdoor gym: used by thousands of people every day for dancing (from ballroom to tango to breaking), Tai Chi, aerobics, badminton… the list is endless. Being surrounded by over a thousand people dancing in (near) perfect synchronisation to a soundtrack of disco competing with red songs, is a surreal experience for the uninitiated: yet it happens here every night.

We’re hoping to return to Chongqing later in the year to bring some of our own work to the city: we’ll post details here as they emerge. In the meantime, I’m going to do my best to reset my body clock and get down to the business of making a film. More on that later…

Spring is arriving, and with it comes what looks to be one of the busiest years we’ve faced. We’re really happy that our first public piece of 2009, Waves, is up-and-running and seems to be having quite an impact on the unsuspecting population of Chelmsford, where it will now run until the 9th March. We managed to get a bit more video from Monday night and it’s up on the Waves page and vimeo. Some stills from the event can also be seen here.

As is so often the case, the interaction appears to be led by children, who aren’t yet burdened with the reticence that comes with age – and is then taken up by the adults whose responses are hugely varied. An average response seems to go something like this: enquiry > confusion > suspicion > investigation > amusement > spinning in a circle.

In just over a week, we’re off to China, where we’re stopping for a few days in Shanghai before heading to Chongqing for a British Council forum on ‘Transforming Public Spaces’. As the fastest growing city in the world, with something like half a million people arriving every year, the city faces enormous social challenges. We’re hoping to find out something about how the people of Chongqing feel about their public spaces, what place public art might have in such an extraordinary situation, and how our work might translate to such a different context. It promises to be a fascinating exploration.

It’s now Wednesday morning, and Waves is in situ in Southend. It was a pretty smooth setup, aided by the unexpectedly clement weather and our fantastic production technician. Running from about 6pm to 11pm each evening, the installation is attracting exactly the diverse and inquisitive crowd that we – and the commissioning body DanceDigital – were hoping for. On Monday night, when we were there to see the launch, we heard a great reaction from the passers-by who found their normal walk home interrupted by this dramatic intervention: kids wanting to know how it worked, and why Southend was getting something like this in the first place; office workers experimenting with throwing shapes in the street on their way home; cyclists bemused and intruiged by the trails they left as they pedalled past. We also saw a lot of texting, twittering and mobile phone cameras in action, so we’ll see how the word-of-mouth news on which a piece such as this relies kicks off over the next day or two.

We’ve put together a minute or so of video from the first night, which can be seen on the Waves page or in full HD glory on our Vimeo page.

T-20 hours.

It’s Thursday morning, and the calm before the storm. Waves, out latest kinetic light installation, opens in Southend, Essex on Monday night, and given all the rigmarole of putting on one of these events, today marks the last full day that I’ll have to tweak the software. It’s another piece written entirely in Max/MSP/Jitter, and an opportunity to put some of the development work that’s been going on behind the scenes into practice. Specifically, looking back at ‘Flock’ and ‘The Hive’, I’ve come to the conclusion that the most engaging types of projected environment are those where there is a more fluid interaction between bodies in the space, and the imagery they create. If the light just responds to you in the same way, whatever you do, it quickly becomes predictable: if you can introduce virtual physical environments that the lights appear to inhabit, you can open up a whole new level of discovery and engagement for the participants.

In the past, I’ve used newtonian physics, some elements of magentic behaviour, and very basic fluid dynamics to create models for these environments, but on a large scale, the processing required to run these simluations at a good resolution becomes pretty intense. Fortunately, for the brave, Jitter allows you to use the power of the graphics card to take the strain off the computer’s main processor. Graphics cards and their GPUs, pushed forward in development by the demands of the gaming and scientific industries, have leaped ahead of CPUs in terms of speed when dealing with large blocks of data. In ‘Waves’, I’ve begun to harness this power to create much more detailed simulations, and, I hope, more engaging environments for the participants. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the projection onto 100 sq. m of pavement in Southend. We’ll see what happens…

We’re just finishing a week of rehearsals with Tom Sapsford for his new dance theatre work. In between exploring the local Bath and Bristol ales and Tom’s fine home cooking, we’ve nearly completed work on the projections. The piece is a portrait of Elizabeth I: in Tom’s own words:

‘Fusing dance, drama and video, Regina explores the many faces of Elizabeth I. Powerful woman ruling in a man’s world, an ageing queen famed for striking looks, a monarch dying without an heir to continue her legacy, Regina examines the tensions inherent in Elizabeth as both an individual and icon.’

Regina will be premiering in three weeks’ time: more details, including tour dates, can be found on the Regina Facebook group here.

Whilst we sort through some of the footage we took from the performances of Flock in Liverpool on the 10th and 11th July, we’ve thrown together some of the raw footage to give a sense of the event. Watch in glorious HD here

This Friday and Saturday (11th and 12th July) Flock (our ‘virtual’ Swan Lake) is in Liverpool as part of Big Dance/ Liverpool City of Culture. It’s on between 10 and 11pm each night in Williamson Square. If you’re going/were there, we’d love to hear from you. There’s a Facebook Group for that very purpose here.

After an Antipodean excursion, the new work by Lloyd Newson and DV8, “To Be Straight With You” has begun touring in the UK. KMA worked closely with Newson on the piece, producing all the projections that accompany, enclose, reveal and augment the action on stage.

“Newson and his designers have beautiful surprises up their sleeves” – The Times
“Don’t ask how it works – it just does” – StageNoise
“Staged with vivid imagination, daring and technological skill” – The Australian

You can see the work as it tours during 2008 – forthcoming UK dates include:

Salford, Lowry: 27th – 28th June
London, National Theatre: 30th October – 9th November

 

Due to popular demand, we’ve now put some short videos of some of our installation work online. Although all are in High Definition, please bear in mind that all of these pieces took place after dark and accept our apologies for any eye strain caused by their viewing. Follow www.vimeo.com/kma/videos to take a look.