ABSTRACT
Originally published online in 2009 and updated in 2012, Synchronous Objects is a collaborative choreographic visualization project that ows from a dance to data to visual objects and back around again. In this work, we explore the question, “what else might physical thinking look like?” by delving deeply into the systems that organize one dance. We translate those systems into data and conceptual frameworks and then generate new manifestations of them in the form of interactive visual objects on a screen. The dance is William Forsythe’s One Flat Thing, reproduced, a contrapuntal ensemble piece exhibiting an exquisite cacophony of thematic material that is tightly structured by its three interlocking systems of organization. It is our choreographic resource, the source from which everything else emanates. The objects are re-articulations of the dance via the data and our own research/ artistic interests. They are both creative and analytical. Some help reveal patterns and allow the eye to see or “read” the dance dierently. Other objects use the patterns and ideas in the dance to generate new animated forms, and still others are tools that allow for a greater degree of user interaction.
