I emailed Stuart Hobday at the Norwich Arts Centre before Christmas to ask about using the hall there. I wanted to try and set up the project I was working on last term, in a space where I could project onto the floor. I didn’t hear from him, so was pleasantly surprised when I followed up to hear that he was willing to let me use the space to experiment. By fortuitous coincidence, the day we arranged for me to have the auditorium, two professional dancers from Argentina (who set up the ‘experimental tango art centre’ in Buenos Aires, check www.tangoscene.com) were visiting Norfolk to teach at the Tango festival at Bylaugh Hall. When I showed them the video I made last term, testing out the MaxMSP Patch I put together, they were interested in helping me develop the idea.

With the assistance (and camera equipment) of my friend and film maker John Franklin, and VJ Marcus Williams from 2bitTV (see 2bittv.net) who is also on the MADP course, and the two really helpful technicians at the Arts Centre: Paul Osborne (Hall tech) and James Gibbon (multimedia tech) we got it all up and running.

Here it is, a draft edit of a potential performance piece.

A bit too long? I’ve only shown it to people who aren’t very interested in tango so far so it’s been difficult to gauge it’s success! Shame the yellow doesn’t show up better, but we had some problems with darker colours. I think I’ll put together an edit of the dancers playing/testing the floor, it will be useful for thinking of ways to progress the project.