Creating live visuals for a dance performance
Tools: TouchDesigner, LivePose
Mosaïco is an ongoing project with choreographer Audrey Gaussiran and percussionist/composer Joannie Labelle. It is a dance performance centered on themes of personal and collective identity, and how it is shaped by our geographical, cultural and digital environment. The show is still a work-in-progress and is set to premiere in 2023.
For this project, my role is to create and design visuals that will be displayed on stage and will interact with the dancers’ bodies and movements. Movements are mostly captured using infrared cameras.
My creative approach here is heavily inspired by nature. My goal is to try and mimick behaviors and patterns found in nature: the way liquids interact with each other, shapes found in flowers and insects, colors found in sunsets, etc. I am also making a conscious effort to try and avoid black entirely, and instead rely on a more varied and creative color palette to convey depth and tension in the visuals. This is my second project ever as a visual artist, Fish Eye (2020) being my first foray into the world of digital live visuals.
From March 5th to March 11th 2021, Audrey and I completed an initial creative residency at the Petit Théâtre du Vieux-Noranda in Rouyn-Noranda, Québec. We used the opportunity to flesh out some initial visual ideas and start sketching the initial structure of the show.
A second residency took place between October 17th and October 21st 2022 at Maison de la culture Pointes-aux-Trembles in Montreal, Québec. We used this time to finalize the structure of the show and test out some new visual ideas. This was also the first residency where we could bring together the various aspects of the show (live dancers, visuals, music and lightning) and see how they interact with each other.
A third residency will take place between January 10th and January 14th 2023 at Salle Émile-Legault in Montreal.
