On Conducting, Motion Capture And The Maestro's Mojo

One of my closest friends is a conductor. I’ve had the opportunity to watch him prepare for concerts, studying the score and making artistic sense of the musical notations on the page, often through much repetition. Watching a conductor lead an orchestra probably looks ethereal if one doesn’t consider all the preparation that goes into doing such a thing. 

Recently The New York Times set out to study how conductors do what they do.  

So in an attempt to understand what is going on, we interviewed seven conductors as they passed through New York in recent seasons with an eye to breaking them down into body parts — like that poster in the butcher shop with dotted lines to show the different cuts of meat — left hand, right hand, face, eyes, lungs and, most elusive, brain.

The conductor’s fundamental goal is to bring a written score to life, through study, personality and musical formation. But he or she makes music’s meaning clear through body motion.

In addition they had Alan Gilbert, music director of the New York Philharmonic, demonstrate and discuss the role of a conductor while having all his motions captured for analysis. You can view the resulting “Connecting Music and Gesture” here.  

Below is a behind the scenes showing how the motion capture took place. 

In the end it must be remembered that the art of conducting is more than just semaphore. It is a two-step between body and soul, between physical gesture and musical personality. The greatest technician can produce flabby performances. The most inscrutable stick waver can produce transcendence.

(via The Maestro’s Mojo by Daniel J. Wakin, NYTimes.com)

An Invocation for Beginnings. Turning the dial from 0 to 1. Ze Frank Is Back!

I believe that is the first time I’ve used an ! on a title. I’m not a fan of the over use of !. But this ! is well earned, cause damn it Ze Frank is back. I must have known, in the back of my mind, that he was coming back today, cause over the weekend I could not stop thinking about his old shows, my favorites like long lost friends. I am surprised at how much I missed his verbosity. 

So, do as the man says, and start something. 

posters of the text and FILDI shirts : http://store.zefrank.com/ http://ashow.zefrank.com

And You Can Dance. For Inspiration. (Five Views On Dance)

I didn’t intend to make dance the theme of the week but as it happens sometimes all of the ideas come together at once and so, in case you missed them earlier, here they are, five views on dance:

• Monday: Dancers In Slow Motion
• Tuesday: The Secret Lives Of Dancers
• Wednesday: David Parsons’ Caught Vs Wrecking Crew Orchestra’s Tron
• Thursday: Dance Your PH.D.
• Friday: A Modest Proposal By John Bohannon: Get Rid Of Powerpoint And Use Dancers Instead

For more posts on dance check out the Dance category. I also encourage you to check out The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life and The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together, two fantastic books by one of America’s greatests choreographers and collaborators Twyla Tharp. 

Dance Your PH.D.

In 2008 science writer John Bohannon launched the first Dance Your PH.D. contest. The rules were simple, each dance had to be based on a scientist’s Ph.D. research, and that scientist had to be part of the dance. In an article he asked the question “Can Scientists Dance?” and the answer turns out to be yes, yes they can. Since then The New York Times and NPR have reported on the contest. 

I think the idea is inspired. Forcing scientist to get our of their heads and connect with their bodies to convey complex concepts probably led to additional moments of insight.

Below you can see for yourself last year’s winner, which besides showing new physics research in dance form also demonstrates a great panache for filmmaking reminiscent of the dance pieces discussed here yesterday. 

Microstructure-Property relationships in Ti2448 components produced by Selective Laser Melting: A Love Story by Joel Miller. 

Hip replacements have a limited life before they too need replacing. This is known in the medical field as revision surgery and it is a source of much pain and inconvenience for the patient. Revision surgery is most often because the underlying bone has deteriorated. Bone needs stress to grow and to maintain strength, yet current hip replacement implants are too stiff - they constrain the affixed bone and prevent it from stretching. The bone around the implant starts to deteriorate and the bond between bone and implant fails. Titanium, used in orthopaedic implants because it is strong, lightweight and biocompatible, transforms at temperatures above 883°C. The atoms rearrange from a densely-packed structure (called the alpha phase) to one that is loosely-packed (beta phase). Both alpha and beta phases are strong, but the beta phase is half as stiff and has elastic properties closer to that of bone. By adding elements such as tin, niobium and zirconium, our titanium alloy keeps its flexible beta structure at room temperature. If the alloy is then re-heated to 450°C, some alpha phase re-emerges, complicating the microstructure. This makes it more difficult for cracks to progress through the metal, making it less susceptible to fatigue failure. If the amount of alpha is controlled, a metal with good fatigue properties and low-stiffness is made. To further reduce the stiffness of the implant and match it to that of bone, we use flexible scaffold structures. The scaffolding also allows the bone to grow into the implant, creating a strong bond. These complicated scaffolds are built from thin layers of titanium powder that are melted with a laser, then cooled to solidify. This manufacturing method is called Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and it is like 3D printing. Because SLM is good at producing one-off items, customised implants are possible; the patient’s CAT or MRI scans can be combined with Computer Aided Design to ensure a perfect fit. My research at the University of Western Australia uses these new materials and advanced manufacturing techniques to try to overcome the main reason why orthopaedic implants fail. If successful, this work will help lead to more durable implants, reducing the need for revision surgery and allowing orthopaedic implants to be used on younger adult patients. This video was created with friends and family for Gonzolabs "Dance Your Ph.D" 2011 Contest. It illustrates a central part of my research: the effect of the titanium alloy microstructure. The video was created using 2200 photographs because we didn't have a video camera, but also (and more importantly) because stop motion, even though tedious to shoot, is fun. The music is "Mischa" by unsigned Perth indi-electropop outfit The Transients. Hear more of their music at www.thetransients.net

(via ScienceMag.org)

David Parsons' Caught vs Wrecking Crew Orchestra's Tron

In 1982 David Parsons premiered Caught, a work that he performed himself. Almost instantly it became a masterpiece of modern dance. Using simple light cues and a strobe Caught features more than 100 leaps in six minutes by a solo dancer who is repeatedly trapped in mid-motion by the strobe lights, to create an illusion of flight. It has been performed thousands of times worldwide, for nearly thirty years.

The video below does not do justice to the piece, it just gives an overall feeling of what it looks like. In the mid 90s I saw it live for the first time. What the video below is missing is how all your senses are engaged when seen in a theater. You sit in absolute darkness and every time the strobe comes on you see an even more incredible leap frozen in time. You wonder how on earth Parsons can time the leaps with such precision while in the dark. You hear the breathing accelerating as the piece goes on, you hear the loud steps with every landing and jump, you are well aware that what you are looking at seems like magic but is indeed a man working very hard. It is mesmerizing. I’ve seen the piece live 5 times over the years and every time, no matter the audience or location at the end everyone erupts in applause. 

A few weeks back a Tron-inspired dance by the Wrecking Crew Orchestra made the rounds. This new routine by the Japanese dance team relies on specially-designed suits covered with wireless, light-emitting strings that can be controlled remotely. As soon as I saw it I thought of Caught. 

The dancers behind both of these pieces work hard, and have a few tricks up their sleeves, to create amazing dance illusions. It is easy to see that there is direct conceptual connection between the two, becuase, as I always say here, everything is a remix.