ALGO BALLET (2021)
Video Collage by: William Humphrey
Algo Ballet is a non-linear virtual installation using found footage in max msp. This project services a starting point for dialogues surrounding the ever-pervasive techno-infrasturctural forces that choreograph our hyperreality. Code envelops, determines, and exclusionizes modernity and demands a dichotomous review of what is human and nonhuman. This project is interested in the fusion, and potential dismantling, of human movement via algorithmic editing systems. A video collage of dancing phantoms, orchestrated by myself and a computer-collaborator. Presented as a virtual installation without set beginning or end.
Western ideological concepts of space and time in harmonious movement with the individual are showcased in the form of choreographed ballet, or dance more broadly. This project aims to dismantle these traditional systems by allocating choreographed direction to a system of algorithms. Employing algorithms as stage-directors, determining the actions of the copied image (copy of a copy to be precise), questions the very nature of dance, orchestration, spontaneity, and human individualism. As a video artist I am interested in positioning myself as mediator between this ensemble of technic devices and my audience, restructuring and exaggerating movements to give my algorithm a relative framework to work within.
Prior to production I secured several dance performance documentations available on video from the public domain. I rigorously viewed each document as to delineate what footage to sample from. Using various experimental photography techniques, primarily pinhole vignetting, I isolated these selected figures for recomposition. I collected 1 hour of found footage as seen through my camera. Two algorithmic editing systems were used in the post-production of this project: (1) A video scrambler, which would determine playback placement, duration, and positionality for each individual file on a frame-by-frame basis. (2) A frame trailer, which retains the visibility of all previous frames in a video file. The finished project is a dense yet intuitively random collage of choreography. Accompanying music follows a similar structure, sampling from Stravinsky, Copland, and Morrissey. A physical installation would be presented as a single channel video using max, msp, and jitter and could run indefinitely as all imagery involved remains potentially simultaneously present. The virtual presentation of this work is slightly more confined, being presented as a film where each choreographic collage is shown linearly. This in turn makes the project more concise as I have a hand in choosing what to show. The work was completed with my own equipment, utilising and reappropriating found imagery from the public domain. I am working towards giving proper accreditation to the dancers and choreographers specifically. I have realized that many of the documents in question skip crediting the dancers specifically. This is unfortunate, however not surprising, considering the very subject matter my dissection unveils.
Upon completion of this project I feel that my camera lens, almost unwittingly, has unveiled the misogynistic and predatory nature to ballet. By allowing my algorithm to sit with a video file for long periods, looping a particular 12 second segment for five minutes, a certain analytical insight opens up. One sees the unseen: what was already there but lying just beneath the surface. In instances while creating the project these vantage points were unveiled to me. I hope that I have encapsulated that feeling or milieu in the film.