相舞 [I-MY] / Dual Noh Dancing of Vision and Reality
Techno Synesthesia: Digital Art Experiment the Relation between
Visual and Audio Senses/ Algorithmic Composition
Media Performance Noh [I-MY] The project started in 2014.
Techno Synesthesia Composition: Kenji Kojima
Choreography & Performance: Mayo Miwa
Two identical characters, a woman possessed by a spirit and the spirit herself. Two dancers, actually one dancer, “I” and “MY” synchronously dance with the music accompanied by performer’s movement. The performer does not only perform the dance but creates the music by her motions. Kenji Kojima's program converts a music from digital data on the changing light and shade that are captured from performer’s movement by the computer algorithm. The back screening plays an algorithmic music and dubbed a vocal that is already created from the video. The final performance is combining live music from the whole stage through a video-cam by Kojima’s software.
The dance technique is based on the Japanese Noh theater. [I-MY] means dual dancing in Japanese. Noh is a classical Japanese form of art consists of dance, music and chanting that has been performed since the 14th century. The Noh expression is very slow and quiet. Emotions are conveyed by stylized gestures and sounds of instruments. The gestures and music have a strong sense of unity. This performance explores a strong sense of unity of gestures and music by the performer.
Technical Statement: Two dancers who are vision and reality dance synchronously with the recorded vocal. The music of the performance is created by the performer's motion. The back screening video and a live music (using live video-cam) are composed of digital data by the computer algorithm. The computer program captures the data from 84 divided grids of video images. The program compares the differences of the brightness of grids, and chooses appropriated data by the algorithm, then converts them to musical notes, and plays the notes by MIDI musical instruments. The screening video shows binaries in white squares that indicate the positions of the data of musical source. Kenji Kojima developed two algorithmic composition applications for a back screening and a live performance.
Cultural Statement: The dance technique and the plot are based on the classical Japanese Noh theater. Most of all Noh dramas are ghost stories. A man, a woman or other creatures died whom the spirit is still hanging around in this world, appears and tells his/her sad and regrettable story to a traveling Buddhist monk or a passenger of the land. The [I-MY] was adapted from Noh drama "Futari Shizuka" that was a woman was possessed by the spirit of "Shizuka" who was a dancer and a lady of the tragic warrior "Yoshitsune".
Jun. 2016
Outdoor video project
Light Year 14: Japan Parade, 相舞 [I-MY]/ Dual Noh Dancing of Vision and Reality
@The Triangle at Pearl Street and Anchorage Place , Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY
Techno Synesthesia Composition: Kenji Kojima
Choreography & Performance: Mayo Miwa
Nov. 2016
A video project, LIGHT YEAR 14: 相舞 [I-MY]/ a dual dancing of vision and reality
Curator: Kyoko SatoEditing Director: Mami KosemuraIn Cooperation with: Hiroshi Kono
@WAH center, Brooklyn, NY
Kenji Kojima + Mayo Miwa
https://wahcenter.net/2016/11/light-year-14-japan-parade/
In 2007, Kenji Kojima developed a computer software program named “RGB Music Lab” that enables color on the screen to covert to 12 levels of music tones through a mathematical algorithm. [I-MY] is a music video work that was composed from digital data of light and shades made by Noh dance. Noh was established in the 14th century in Japan. Kenji's series of ‘Techno Synesthesia’ videos with music has been archived in the New Museum, New York, ACM Siggraph, and presented many other cities and countries such as Berlin, Istanbul, Spain, Brazil, Finland, China, and Copenhagen. Kojima lives in New York. The performer in the video is Mayo Miwa.
