Pixels on the precipice

Pixel first hit the stage in 2014, created by the hip-hop choreographer Mourad Merzouki in cooperation with Adrien Mondot and Claire Bardainne, a duo specialising in graphic programs for innovative, interactive scenography. Featuring a brilliantly accomplished, breath-taking fusion of dance and video projections, Pixel has proved so popular that it is still touring today. The computer-generated graphic concept creates immersive surroundings for the performers on stage in the eyes of the audience.

 Many of the projections in Pixel are based on forms that, despite their complexity, could be immediately identified as artificial. To make them work in the public’s perception, the audience needs to relate on an emotional level. That is achieved by appealing to the same kind of human reception processes as magicians and mentalists also address.

Dancers, skaters, and a contortionist appear on the stage in Pixel. They balance on the edge of apparent precipices and jump over what look like deep canyons or bound from the peak of one rock to another. On landing, they steady themselves as if their lives depended on it. They dash between holes that suddenly open up in the ground or turn somersaults to bridge cracks in the rock that just as suddenly close again. The dancers’ performances contribute to the convincing impression of the sophisticated illusions, as we empathize with their situations. While the projections don’t fool our brains, they do trick our senses, even though we objectively know that the landscape through which the dancers are whirling is itself moving across the stage. The effect is based on a trick that even the theatre of bygone centuries used – when stagehands cranked rolls of painted scenery from right to left so that the performers appeared to be moving from left to right while walking on the spot. 

Virtual object manipulation
A skater appears on the scene, turning ever faster pirouettes. She generates such an incredible rotational force and virtual vortex that the tornado conjured by her spinning body unleashes snow ​drifts. Sometimes the stage is flooded by virtual ocean waves, or a reeling circus ring on the virtual floor vibrates until a perfectly round black hole appears. It all shows how Mondot and Bardainne use projections not as décor or as a purely aesthetic device but as an active, even propelling, element of the dramaturgy. The focus on the ground to propel the action is rare in theatre and distinguishes Pixel from other productions.

But the tricks work vertically, too. An umbrella and a performer bracing himself against simulated wind are enough to elicit the audience’s empathy, an effect completed by white dots of digital snow swirling across the curtain as if blown by gusts of wind. And, of course, the digital snow landing on the walls needs to be wiped off to ensure an unobstructed view. This is done with a mere flick of a hand, without feeling any cold. Another possibility is to nibble the pixel snowflakes away. And then the virtual flakes can be spat out again, and the particles built up into a storm, the like of which no real-life fire-eater could ever duplicate. Images such as this draw on and play with our memory store of real-world experiences.

Perhaps the most surprising effect is generated by the involuntary blending in our minds of the real back wall of the stage with the projected pixels. A kind of vertical cave wall emerges as a result, creating a cosy, secure atmosphere. The performers play with the pixels and change their forms with mere movements of their arms, seemingly building their own shelters in the wink of an eye. It as if the real-life performers are transferring our collective fantasies on to the white particles, which seem able to perform any function and fulfil any wish at the drop of a hat. But suddenly the wall appears to tip forward in the space, threatening to bury the dancers, and perhaps even the auditorium, underneath it. This effect is achieved using the same trick of perspective, applied to a moving image, as later when the stage seems to rotate horizontally on its own axis. In these two instances, the pixel pattern achieves true three-dimensionality via Keystoning (deliberately distortingthe projection of an image in relation to the projection surface).

Virtual juggling
Mondot not only has a background in IT, but also became an accomplished juggler while a student, showing his skills at various street-art festivals. And when he combined the two fields to invent virtual juggling, he had a hit on his hands. His first major coup was Convergence 1.0, named after his self-devised computer program Convergence, which calculates the flight trajectories of virtual objects in real time and enables them to be projected on-screen. To develop the program, he fed findings from research into the movements of swarms of bees, particle accelerators, and spectrographic analyses. The final touch was to allow sound parameters to be integrated so that the ​program not only performs interactive calculations in real time but also enables musical input to influence the projections. 

For Pixel, Mondot devised e-motion, an interactive graphic program for vertically moving spots of light that also generates a complex understanding of the space via simultaneous performance on several surfaces. Another piece developed using the program is Hakanai, a solo for a female dancer in a rectangular space, faced on all sides and above by transparent projection surfaces. This creates an immersive area, which is in turn surrounded by the audience on all four sides. Here, the audience is invited to enter the interactive space after the performance and try out for themselves the motion-capture system as it translates their movements on the dance floor into mobile projections. Thomas Hahn     is a freelance journalist based in Paris. A regular contributor to BTR, he reports on multimedia developments, stage design, acoustics, and theatre architecture.