The changes in creative means and techniques further blur the traditional boundaries between creators and receivers, artists and communicators. With the maturity and wide application of network computer technology, "everyone is an artist" has become a reality. An art lover without systematic dance training can participate in the professional creative experiment of new media with the help of new creative communication platforms such as "network choreography".
Similarly, a young man who has no professional film director and filming training foundation can also spread his debut quickly through the way of "mass communication to mass". 20 12 Since February, a 10-minute experimental short film named Solipsist has spread rapidly in Weibo, and won the special prize of the jury of this year's American Defamation Film Festival. This experimental short film, which combines dance, costume, drama and other elements, has created amazing visual effects by means of new media "manual" operation, and maximized the communication effect with the help of online "word of mouth".
Many similar cases tell us that the unique artistic creation and communication mechanism in the new media era will make the traditional art production-consumption model encounter unprecedented challenges. Therefore, how to promote the integration of art and technology through effective new media curation, realize cross-border collaborative innovation and win the opportunity of communication has become the key success factor of the new media dance creative practice system. ③
First of all, move towards the institutionalized "screen dance"
Since Maya Linde's Research on Camera Choreography (1945), dance artists, media artists and even media technicians have been innovating dance videos in various ways. These video arts, which are suitable for the new media to display, broadcast and spread in the future and contain creative elements of dance, can all be called "dancing on the screen". In the long-term practice, "dancing on the screen" has gradually formed the creative practice characteristics such as "screen" of performance space, "fragmentation" of performance mode and "montage" of language structure.
First of all, the so-called "screenization" of performance space means that the performance space of such works of art must be transformed from theater stage space to various types of screens. This means that "dance on the screen" is a proper term, which in principle does not include the re-creation of existing stage dance works, but refers to "dance specially created for the camera/screen". Johannes bullinger, a famous media dance artist, believes that the performance space of dance has entered a "screen" era. Through the artistic experiment of "changing the stage", some avant-garde dance artists fully realized the creative value of "lens" and "picture". They found that after lens capture and computer software processing, dance movements can be freely reorganized or recreated in completely different time and space environments, and the "time and space force" elements of dance have changed accordingly.
Secondly, the selective role of "lens" makes the dancers' performance elements show the characteristics of "fragmentation". In order to adapt to the "performance in front of the camera", dancers should pay more attention to the expressive force of expression and local action details. At the same time, with the rapid development of digital technology, visual elements such as "virtual dancers" can also be conveniently used as special "actors" in the "screen stage" space. For example, Bird (2000), directed by David Hinton and choreographed by Gorander Snaith, is a dynamic dance work without dancers, and won the best screen choreography award in IMZ Video Dance Festival.
Thirdly, the montage technique makes "dancing on the screen" gain more freedom in the expression of time and space. In China, the first mature dance short film was Chasing Dreams (in 2006, 3 minutes and 27 seconds), which was shot by Kang Jianfei and Gu Jinghui, graduates of the Art Communication Department of Beijing Dance Academy. This work won the second prize of the national "Welcome to the Olympics" three-minute DV/ Animation Competition. Its success lies in vividly telling the story of the protagonist who traveled through time and space to Beijing to participate in the Olympic Games through close-ups of local actions such as "drilling the eyes of fire" and "touching the advertising screen", combined with dance performances in real environment.
At present, "dancing on the screen" has become the "routine" work type of many professional dance groups in the world, and it is no longer an experimental tool for avant-garde dancers. At the same time, with the popularization of shooting and editing technology and network transmission technology, many dancers can easily create their own dance short films and upload them to the network for display and communication. For them, "technical impulse" has completely given way to "creative expression", and the "pen-changing movement" of dance creation has ended. On the other hand, media artists and technicians who originally entered the innovation movement as "partners" began to turn to new dance special effects design with more technical difficulties.
Second, "the screen on the stage" and its diversified and open creative practice category.
Here, the author only describes all kinds of live performance art experiments and multimedia design practices with the general term "dancing on the screen". Since the 1960s, artists and engineers have begun to study various possibilities of this combination. In the 1990s, this creative practice made an important breakthrough in "stage multimedia special effects" and "interactive performance in public space". This creative practice is generally based on interactive technology and multimedia projection technology, and pursues the combination of computer-controlled acousto-optic image system and human behavior. [1] 17 At present, the "screen on the stage" has evolved into two categories: multimedia drama returning to the theater space and interactive performing arts projects entering the public space.
(A) stage multimedia special effects design and dance multimedia drama research and development
As a special computer-aided stage art, "stage multimedia special effects" has become a new territory that action art, media artists and technical engineers all over the world are willing to actively participate in. Similar to the special effects in movies, TV and games, multimedia special effects on the stage also need to produce some special sound and visual effects with the help of computer software. The difference is that the art of projection device occupies a more important position in the practice of multimedia stage art. The use of new projection curtain materials such as gauze curtain and water curtain and the abnormal design of traditional projection curtain provide the basic space for multimedia stage special effects designers to display their creative talents. However, a variety of visual images show a certain structural or logical "space montage" effect at the same time, which provides new possibilities for the interactive dialogue of multimedia media in the stage space. On this basis, multimedia drama with overall or holographic artistic effect began to mature.
The research and development of dance multimedia dramas in China is represented by several small and medium-sized experimental multimedia dramas planned and produced by the Department of Art Communication of Beijing Dance Academy. Among them, the dance multimedia drama Beijing Image (2006) co-directed by American media artist John Crawford, American director Lisa Naugle and China director Xiao is the first typical multimedia drama in China. ⑥
The play mainly uses the interactive way of special-shaped projection curtain and its main video content to create "stage special effects", and at the same time successfully creates multimedia visual effects, so that the projectors and actors on the stage can participate in the "performance" together. The main content on the left side of the stage is the real-time playing of electronic sound effects and abstract visual symbols, and three original dance short films, Beijing in Hutong, Beijing in CBD and Beijing in 798, are played on the right side in turn. The theme dance short film on the right tells three stories about the visual image of modern Beijing, and the audio-visual special effects played on the left prompt the background of these three stories. In the live performance, the visual image of dancers, characterized by simple costumes and ritualized performances, symbolizes modern China people living in this international metropolis. In the works, the multi-media stage special effects staggered in time and space not only bring rich audio-visual experience to the audience, but also effectively convey the visual impression of the creator on metropolis Beijing under the background of the times. It can be said that in the multimedia drama Beijing Image, "technological innovation" has been successfully integrated into "artistic creation".
Since then, the Department of Art Communication of Beijing Dance Academy has successively presented three original small and medium-sized dance multimedia dramas, namely, Female Reading (2009), Dancer (20 10) and Backlight @ Youth (20 12), on the salon stage of the Academy. Although these works are not mature enough, from the historical vertical axis, they also reflect the progressive planning ideas of the creators in learning from international experience and promoting the creation of local dance multimedia dramas. It can be said that these three low-cost productions of the Art Communication Department of Beijing Dance Academy, from the local experiment of new media projection design in Women Reading, to the structural design of interaction between projection content and live performance in Dancer, and then to the active efforts of the overall narrative of full-effect multimedia design in Backlight @ Youth, provide the first complete set of experimental samples for the creation of China's dance multimedia drama.
(b) Multimedia interactive performance projects that are booming in public spaces.
Different from the academic background of dance multimedia drama, multimedia interactive performance projects in public space have become the darling of government funding systems in various countries because of their concern for social issues. In this kind of projects, the focus of planners and directors is no longer the simple artistic innovation or artistic expression, but the public's participation in art. This kind of "interactive performance art" based on interactive technology completely subverts the traditional relationship between viewing and acting, and the audience becomes an indispensable part of it.
The large-scale interactive performing arts project "Being in a Foreign Land" (2008) planned and hosted by Dr. Cheryl Stoke, a senior professor of dance and creative industries in the School of Creative Industries of Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia, is a typical case in this regard. The theme of this project is human drift in the network age, and the design of the main building, square and surrounding streets of the Creative Industry College of Queensland University of Science and Technology is the main performance area. The project takes "space montage" as the main structural mode, and through the improvisation of QUT outer space dancers and the multimedia interactive performance of QUT, the community people are induced to enter the three-dimensional interactive space set by the creator to "watch" or "participate" in the performance. Finally, the work takes the large LED new media exhibition board on the outer wall of the main building of QUT teaching as a "node", which accelerates the rhythm of interactive performance at different levels in each space and ends at a climax.