Chris Ziegler, Double Skin / Double Mind

Artist in residence March and April 2007

Throughout March and April 2007, German media artist Chris Ziegler was artist in residence at the Netherlands Media Art Institute. During these two months he developed an interactive installation in which different motion capture systems, sound and film will simulate a dance workshop space.

The interactive installation Double Skin/ Double Mind is a version of the Double Skin/ Double Mind workshop simulation space. This workshop, which has been taught by dance company Emio Greco | PC since 1996, represents the basis of the creative work of choreographers Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten. Participants in this workshop are challenged to explore their own creativity by learning new ways of dealing with their bodies.

The installation offers participants the possibility of taking part in a virtual version of the workshop in real time, while receiving verbal, physical and peripheral information. By following the lifesize figure of Emio Greco, the participants will recognize, compare and understand their actions and involvement in the practice of this workshop. They will travel through the Double Skin/ Double Mind structure in a mental and physical way, learning what the different demands are.
Chris Ziegler (ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany) will work together with Emio Greco | PC’s researcher Bertha Bermudez and with motion capture researcher Frédéric Bevilacqua (IRCAM, Paris). In this collaboration, dance, new media, film and motion capture will be the tools with which to approach a diverse audience, with the aim to building a bridge between people, media and the practice of dance.

Biographies
Chris Ziegler, has been a freelance media artist since 1993, a.o. at ZKM Karlsruhe, Ballett Frankfurt, the Goethe Institute and the National Gallery of Canada (CD-ROM/DVD production / installation design and programming). Since 2000 he has produced different interactive performances and has been invited internationally to give workshops (USA, Ukraine, Singapore, Japan). In this project he is responsible, as designer and programmer, for the interactive DVD-Rom and Installation.www.movingimages.de

Frédéric Bevilacqua is researcher at IRCAM, Paris, in gesture analysis and interactive systems in the RealTime Applications Team and in the Performing Arts Technology Research Team. He holds a master in physics and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Optics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. He studied music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and participated in several artistic projects as a pianist and/or composer. From 1999 to 2003, he was a researcher at the Beckman Laser Institute, University of California Irvine (UCI). He performed various projects
on motion capture, movement analysis and interactive installations in collaboration with the UCI Music and Dance Departments. In the current project, he is involved in the domain of gestural analysis.

Bertha Bermudez danced with Emio Greco | PC from 1998 until the beginning of 2005 (before that with William Forsythe, Nacho Duato a.o.). At this moment she is assistant and researcher with EG | PC. She is responsible for the project coordination and research around EG | PC’s work.
www.emiogrecopc.nl