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

Flock, our new installation made in collaboration with Tom Sapsford, premieres in Trafalgar Square on Thursday 1st February.

Before that, despite its lengthening teeth, Dancing in the Streets returns to York (St Sampson’s Square) for three nights from Friday January 19th.

Other ongoing news; Our AHRC research project with the University of Leeds on projected light and performance is now well under way. We’ll post some pictures of work in progress very soon. Several new dance projects are in development. More news on these soon. The CGI work on The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey is nearly done. The film is due for release in time for Christmas 2007.

In addition to the photos of 5 Courts in Leeds on Flickr, we have now uploaded a very rough version of some video footage of the same event. You can find the 80 second clip at:

Google Video: 5 Courts at Leeds Light Night

YouTube: 5 Courts at Leeds Light Night

The last few weeks have seen much frantic activity, most of it focussed around projecting bits of light onto assorted paving. A couple of weeks ago, we were at the Esterni festival in Terni, Italy, where our ‘Dancing in the Streets’ installation had been set up above the patterned cobbles of the Palazzo Spada in the centre of the city. The following week, we were back in Yorkshire for the launch of 5 Courts, our multi-city installation that was commissioned by illumate as part of the Light Night festival.

We’ve posted some photographs of Dancing In The Streets in Terni and 5 Courts in Leeds on Flickr – some video footage should follow when we have the strength. In the meantime, we’re heading towards the conclusion of our work on The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, and looking forward to the beginning of our collaborative research project with The University of Leeds.

Due to a double-booking at the ICA, our new piece, Flock, for Trafalgar Square is to be rescheduled – more details as soon as we have a date.

We’ve got a new site-specific kinetic light installation which has been designed for Esterni, a contemporary creative festival held in Terni, Italy. The piece will be installed in the courtyard of The Palazzo Spada, Terni’s very beautiful, Renaissance, town hall. The installation will run between 8pm and midnight from the 27th to the 30th of September.

Immediately after Italy we return to premiere 5 Courts. 5 Courts is truly a world first, a revolutionary multi-player game that we’ve invented, designed and programmed. It will be played (performed?) between the cities of York, Leeds, Hull, Sheffield and Bradford on the evenings of the 6th and 7th of October as part of Illuminate’s Light Night celebrations. This from the Illuminate blurb,

“A revolutionary multi-player, multi-site game and arts space to be played across all five cities. Players use their own bodies to send balls of projected light across the playing space, aiming for goals representing the other cities. Entirely interactive, it’s a competition to see which city has the least light balls in their square when the time runs out. Designed to be aesthetically beautiful and great fun to play and watch, games are a minute long and run throughout the night. Just turn up and play, or get your team together in advance.”.

Each participating city will have a court in its city centre where a league table will be displayed to keep the overall score. We’ll post details of the exact locations in the next few days…

On the nights of the 16 – 19th November (* dates have changed – more info soon) we will premiere another new installation called Flock in Trafalgar Square, London. The piece, commissioned by the ICA, and made in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Tom Sapsford, is inspired by Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Again, the piece will run after dark. Exact times and more details will follow.

Our new dance collaboration with Robert Cohan, Darshan Singh Bhuller and Kate Coyne is still in development. It should premiere in London in December before touring in 2007. More details of this when they’re confirmed.

Work on the digital set design for The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey continues…

The 6th Sightsonic Festival of Digital Arts happens in York this coming weekend. We will be giving an artists’ talk at the Guildhall (doing our best Gilbert and George impression) on Friday 14 October at 1pm to introduce The Square, which is officialy unveiled at 7.30pm that evening.

The Square projects a simple abstraction of an organic, microscopic, world on to the city’s pavements. It invites passers by to cross its threshold and step into a simple ecosystem that has been magnified enormously in order to explore the following themes:

How quickly do we, as the invaders of others’ environments, project our moral judgments and narratives on to the events that are unfolding around us? How do we identify individuals as groups, and one group as being different from another? Who is most in need of our assistance and why?

Is the human desire to interfere, to arbitrate and rule irrepressible? Could there be unforeseen consequences of our presence? Are there games in which the only way to win is not to play?

Questions, questions…

The void left in York since “Dancing in the Streets” ended is scheduled to be filled in dramatic style by our next public installation.

“The Square”, will be launched at the SightSonic festival of digital arts in October, and will once more confuse the pigeons and entertain the public with a deeper, more interactive work that will invite an exploration of movement, space and sound. Working with the same surveillance technology used in “Dancing in the Streets”, this new installation will retain the immediacy of interaction, but will also contain a more intricate series of behaviours that will reward the inquisitive visitor. Working with us on the audio elements of the piece will be Dr Damian Murphy, who will help us to transform the square in Davygate into a completely immersive environment from nightfall each evening.

We’re in the early stages of development at the moment, and as part of the process we’d like to gather your feedback from the “Dancing in the Streets” installation; if you’ve got any comments on any aspect of the piece, please leave a note on “The Square” discussion forums.

“The Square” has been commissioned by York Renaissance Project.

Asterisk*, (the centre for the study and development of narrative) is based at Shandy Hall in North Yorkshire where Laurence Sterne wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. It is a concept developed by KMA and The Laurence Sterne Trust that aims to use the spirit and intellectual resources of Shandy Hall to inspire artists and the public to explore and experiment with nonlinearity, and to examine and develop the convergences between art forms within our contemporary culture. It aims also to illustrate how new technology can, in the hands of artists, be used to deliver entirely new artistic opportunities.

In the autumn and winter of 2005, Asterisk* will offer two residencies of three weeks duration each. These will provide exceptional opportunities for artists keen to experiment with current practice in diverse media, specifically exercises in non-linearity, with an emphasis on interactivity and audience participation. Intersections with technology are encouraged and technology specialists (us) will be available for collaboration.

More here…

On Friday evening (11th March) our new installation, Dancing in the Streets was launched in York. If you find yourself somewhere near here between 6.30pm and midnight do please go and have a play. There are a variety of states that the piece cycles through. These range from fluttering digital butterflies of a type to delight Mariah Carey, to a rollerball-esque game in which pucks of light are propelled at speed over the pavement by the movement of participants. “Amazing but knackering!” gasped at least one late night reveller . To give you some further idea of what to expect, here are a few photos taken during production rehearsals (in very low light).

P.S. The map of York that briefly reveals itself beneath participants’ feet is reproduced from Pierre Chassereau’s map of York of 1750 and should not be relied on to find one’s way home…

We’re now pressing on, adapting this technology for use in a full scale dance work. Apropos of which, our collaboration with Phoenix Dance Theatre moves to Sadler’s Wells this weekend. If you’re in London on Friday or Saturday 18th/19th March, tickets are available here. The piece then tours nationally.

If you do get a chance to see either of the above do please email us and let us know what you think.

On the evening of Friday March 11th we will reveal “Dancing in the Streets” a kinetic light sculpture intended to “refresh, re-interpret and breathe new life into York’s historic urban environment”.

The installation, to be opened by Adam Hart Davis, is a work that comes to life through the actions and reactions of its audience. Abstract, organic patterns appear on the pavement after dark, inviting passers-by to come closer. As they do, their own movements begin to influence what they see — the projected light follows them, links them to others, and pulls them into a relationship with the artwork that invites playfulness and creativity.

It’s an inherently technical work, but no technology is visible to the audience — the images are projected from a window high above the street, and there’s no-one there to tell you what you can — and can’t — do. The motion of the audience is analysed by a computer which generates the projections in real-time. There’s no repetition, no chance of having “seen it all before”. It’s totally under the control of the audience, and it will be as much a social experiment as an artwork as we discover how the public will respond to the control that they are being given.

Plans for a launch performance are still being developed. We’re currently developing some new ideas with erstwhile collaborators Dr Sita Popat, Scott Palmer and their students from the School of Performance & Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds. More soon…