Photos in Prep for Performance

Fun Photos From Class

We learned about UltraVideo as a tool to send video with lower latency.







Animator and educator Carleton Palmer visited our class to share his videos inspired by the events of 9/11. I really admired his video called "Ascension" and have asked to use it in my performance in December.







We took a look at potential diagrams for tech setup for our performance.

MIDI and Audio Demonstration

Professor Beyer instructed us in the ways of MIDI input and GarageBand. It turns out that GarageBand can be pretty sophisticated in terms of editing, etc. But the most sophisticated are Logic and ProTools.

The First Step

I just recorded myself reading an excerpt from a Tony Hiss 1987 article published in The New Yorker as a part of a work-in-progress for the December 10th concert.

This is mortifying - I hate listening to my own voice (am I alone?). Now I'll be able to sketch out some dance/movement, but I want to find some classmates to jump on board (especially helping to compose something awesome based off of this article (not necessarily me reading it, either!).

Volunteers?

Tony Hiss "Reflections" by ericafrankel

Where was I?

In advance of our concert on December 10th, which is a meditation on September 11th ten years later, we've been asked to share a little of our own story.

where was I on 9/11?

In 2001 I was a freshman in high school in Snellville, Georgia. School started early in the morning at 7:20am, so I was already entering my third period Latin class when I first began to learn what happened. Mr. Toda had the TV on in the classroom, and as the first of us began to filter in, he looked our way and chuckled. "Can you believe this?" He gestured toward the tv glowing in the corner, "some guy just crashed his plane into the World Trade Center tower in New York City. What a dumbass!"

At that point no one knew that this was not just an unfortunate accident in the friendly skies, but I bristled at his cavalier attitude. Throughout the day we learned more of the story, but classes resumed as normal. I remember being very scared for my family in New York City, but feeling very removed from the whole thing.

"It's Fine That We Were All A Little Bit Confused"

Today I spoke again with my collaborators from "The Grandparents Project" to follow up from our mini in-class experiment in October. As for the quote above, Anna remarked on the level of structure of the improvisation score and reflected that it probably worked well, in this short iteration, that the directions for the dancers (outside of the immediate tasks) were in some ways left quite vague.

An Idea for the December 10th concert

I feel really strongly about helping to produce a piece for our 12/10 concert at the Frederick Lowe Theater, but many of the details are still fuzzy. The concert will be an Internet2 Distributed Performance to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 Attack on the World Trade Center.

I have a half-fledged idea which I think could involve several of classmates as collaborators. As a part of my graduate seminar in dance, I read an incredible article by Tony Hiss in the archives of The New Yorker called "Reflections: Experiencing Places" from June 22, 1987.

Hiss reflects on the World Trade Center towers in a really beautiful way, in a time where our only associations with these buildings were their aspirational height.

I'd like to incorporate a reading of the text, some movement, some projection, and some music. I'd even be excited to get some Tisch ITP folks on board to help us conceive of bringing in some motion-capture or interactive elements. I imagine the very first step as recording a reading of the text and then creating a music/soundscape around it, through it, and over it. As you might have noticed, this is not my expertise.

Look forward to discussing more in class on Tuesday.