Live-i workshop (1999-2015)

ABOUT THE LIVE-I WORKSHOP

The Live-I Workshop was Troika Ranch’s annual intensive for artists exploring the relationship between live performance and interactive technology. Presented from 2009 through 2015, it combined practical training with a strong artistic and pedagogical goal: to help artists not only use technology themselves, but also think critically about what role technology should play in performance.

When the Live-I Workshop began, digital technology had barely penetrated the dance field. The first workshop used Mark Coniglio’s Interactor software and STEIM’s Image/ine real-time video system – powerful tools that were difficult for dancers and choreographers with little technical background to master. This experience reinforced the need for more accessible tools, and soon after, Isadora became the primary software environment for the Live-I Workshop.

But the Live-I Workshop was never simply an Isadora course. Participants learned technologies such as live video, sensors, tracking, audio analysis, MIDI, lighting control and, in later years, Kinect skeletal tracking, while continually asking larger artistic questions: What does the technology contribute? Why should a movement control an image or sound? What does the audience perceive? Does the interaction change the meaning of the work? And does the artistic idea need technology at all?

This balance between technical empowerment and artistic reflection remained central throughout the sixteen-year history of the Live-I Workshop.

PEDAGOGY AND DEVELOPMENT

A defining principle of the Live-I Workshop was that technology should be treated as compositional material, not simply as an effect or novelty. The goal was to give artists enough technical independence to experiment freely while encouraging them to think about interaction in terms of structure, meaning and dramaturgy.

The 2006 Live-I Workshop illustrates this clearly. The two-week program was divided between Software / Sensors / Technology and Aesthetics and Creative Expression. Participants first developed the technical vocabulary needed to create interactive systems, then applied those skills through movement exercises, compositional studies, discussion and individual projects.

An interactive system might be approached as an instrument, an environment or even another performer. Movement, location, sound or gesture could influence video, sound or light in real time, but the important question was not merely whether the interaction worked technically. Participants were encouraged to consider what that relationship meant and how it affected both performer and audience.

As the technology evolved, so did the workshop. Early editions moved from Interactor and Image/ine toward the emerging Isadora environment. Later workshops incorporated live video processing, cameras as sensors, image tracking, sound analysis, MIDI, DMX and other systems. The 2015 Live-I Workshop, the 16th annual edition, focused on Kinect skeletal tracking and the dramaturgy of tracking.

Despite those technological changes, the underlying philosophy remained consistent. The Live-I Workshop sought to make technology accessible enough that artists could move beyond the question of how to make it work and concentrate instead on why it should be there.

In that sense, the Live-I Workshop was also an extension of Troika Ranch’s own artistic research. Questions emerging from the company’s performances influenced the development of tools such as Isadora, while the Live-I Workshop opened those tools and ideas to a broader community of dancers, choreographers, theater makers, musicians and visual artists.

Links to Participant Reflections:

2003 Workshop Announcement

Selected Chronology

  • 1999 – First Live-I Workshop. Interactor and STEIM’s Image/ine are among the principal software environments. The technological learning curve for dancers is extremely steep.
  • 2000-2001 – Early versions of Isadora begin circulating. Later testimony places Isadora 0.7 in teaching use in 2000 and beta 0.6 in circulation by 2001.
  • 2001 – Isadora is independently remembered as being demonstrated to artists in Paris at ENSCI.
  • 2002 – The Summer Live-I Workshop and Isadora receive published documentation. Isadora is described as a graphical environment for controlling digital media interactively.
  • 2003 onward – Isadora increasingly becomes the principal technological environment associated with the Live-I Workshop, although the workshop continues to incorporate external hardware, software and sensing technologies.
  • Mid-to-late 2000s – The curriculum becomes a mature combination of technical instruction, sensing and tracking, composition, movement investigation, dramaturgy and participant-created works.
  • 2013 – A Portland Live-I Workshop is explicitly oriented toward “movement makers” and choreographic interventions, showing how far the emphasis has evolved from basic technological access.
  • 2015 – The 16th annual Live-I Workshop, in Portland, focuses on Kinect skeletal tracking and the dramaturgy of tracking.

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