ABSTRACT
Effect, a dance work for five performers, was created by Finnish choreographer Taneli Törmä as part of a cooperation titled Between Us, involving Tanzmainz, the dance company of the state theatre Mainz, the art gallery Kunsthalle Mainz, and Motion Bank, a research project of the Mainz University of Applied Sciences. The six-week creation process of Effect was recorded on video and annotated using Motion Bank's web application Piecemaker, and the finished 60-minute performance was recorded using video and a 3D motion capture system. The data resulting from this recording approach was distributed to visual artists to use as material or starting point for their own works to be exhibited at the Kunsthalle Mainz. An accompanying installation by Motion Bank provided a graphical analysis of the final choreographic structure of Effect, alongside a detailed explication of its creation. This chapter describes in detail the dance documentation approaches practised by Motion Bank, in particular the role of live-annotation in the studio and the development of a specific arts practice-based terminology that emerges from this context. The results are applicable to other data recordings, and the article also describes the particular motion capture technology involved in this project. This includes in-depth discussion of the strategies required to ensure significant connections are maintained with the documented artistic source material. In conclusion, the authors draw attention to the history of related choreographic documentation projects working with dance data, suggesting the cumulative potential research value of such projects can now be realised more fully.
