100 dancers 2011

How do you transform the notion of a given space in seconds? You introduce 100 dancing bodies!

The Interactive Light Costumes for the ‘100 Dancers Project’ is was initiated by Diffus Design. The idea was to bring an extra layer of possible expression into a specific dance technique called contact improvisation. The artistic aim of 100 Dancers was to create site specific choreography and big volumes of dancing bodies that in seconds would transform our notion of a given space.

In collaboration with dancers from around the world as well as international installation artists, musicians, engineers, scientists, architects, programmers the Danish organiser and choreographer Pipaluk Supernova has, over the years experimented with many different ways of bringing the world of dance and site specific experience to the audience.

Artistic Experiment Project

The 100 Dancers Platform

The focus of the 100 Dancers project was the creative process in dance, the creation of events and the invention of new choreographic concepts. The 100 Dancers project addressed the individual artist’s need to explore on their own terms and yet contribute to a bigger picture. The tools were improvisation and contact improvisation, investigating the ‘now’ experience, investigating the presence of other bodies, understanding the nature and proporties of the surroundings and enabling a dynamic search within questions and possible answers.

Site Specific dance was one of the main themes of the 100 Dansers project. ‘Site specific’ means creating artistic events for a specific space or place (not a theatre or a conventional stage). Both our cities and our nature provide an endless source of incredible sceneries, each one with their own unique atmosphere and multitude of stories to be told. This way the 100 Dansers project aimed to bring dance to public places and urban environments, for a short moment transforming our habitual surroundings.

Interactive Light Costumes

The interactive light costumes had to intervene with site specificity and improvisation. Therefor we created an interaction that provided the opportunity to investigate in real time and costumes with an ability to effortlessly move from one body to the next. We aimed at a balance between the costume as something you wear and the prop as something you carry and hand over.

The costumes had 2 functioning modes: Acceleration and rotation. The pattern’s velocity and brightness increases depending on those 2 parameters. Also, there was an “idle” mode: When left alone on the scene, the costume would ‘pulsate’ trough its light pattern as if they would breath trough its light pattern.

The Interactive Light Costumes for the ‘100 dancers’ is a project initiated and financed by Diffus Design. The framework, the materials and the context were given by Diffus. The shape, form and interaction were developed as a joint project between Diffus Design and designers Coline Fontaine and Delphine Piault.

Credit
Design and concept: Hanne-Louise Johannesen, Michel Guglielmi, Coline Fontaine and Delphine Piault
Programming and engineering: David Sjunnesson and Kenneth Weiss
Visual communication designer: Mette Egekvist
Project partner: Pipaluk Supernova