@BUSTLELAMP

A NEW WORK IN DEVELOPMENT

I began by thinking about two characters across oceans of time and how they would communicate. One a mathematician, one an engineer. They might speak using mathematics. I was looking at our current moment and the relentless, exhausting polarization. This piece is really about the tension between the fear of knowledge and the constructs humans use to build language and symbol systems that speak about what we can’t see, what we can’t touch. Mathematics, physics, the evolution of models of the cosmos…and the forces of attraction between heavenly bodies…or humans.

The core of Hypatia is a hybrid AI that responds to the movement and gestures of multiple viewer-operators, and reacts to them with what appears to be a complex personality.

This innovative format is a fusion of sculpture, installation, cinema and performance for viewers moving in a space. Versions will exist for linear performance and for installation. 

Viewer/operators move around the triangular scrim and engage with Hypatia and other characters and elements of the narrative. 

The project is a visual novel, a movie, and a machine that tells stories. A poetic and dreamlike experience, viewers activate the process and become embedded in another dimension.

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TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS AND EQUIPMENT FOR INSTALLATION:

The screen has 3 scrims in a triangle formation. It breaks down and reassembles for travel. There are 3 short throw projectors hung – one for each side of the triangle.

3 speakers and 6 cameras are embedded in the screen structure, a cube of 8 speakers: 4 hung in the upper room corners, 4 on floor stands, and 2 additional Ultrasonic speakers on servo motors hung. Equipment travels with the show unless a venue supplies specified projectors or speakers. 

The AI combines Azure Kinect skeletal tracking and game engine AI with proprietary software that includes blob detection and interactive and emergent behavior design. 

The installation version is an infinity loop that runs for approx. 15 min. The longer narrative performance will be approx. 40 min. There are a variety of ways the installation can be presented using both formats or one and this can be shaped with the venue to best suit presentation needs. Spaces: Black box theaters or gallery spaces that have the ability to be dark and hang speakers and projectors. The screen structure is 10’ high with 3 projection surfaces of 8’x10’. The minimum ceiling height for the room is approx. 12’

SUNJAMMER 6 IS SUPPORTED BY: 

• Foundation for Contemporary Arts 2026
• Doris Duke Foundation Performing Arts Technologies Lab Grant, 2024/2025
• Fellow: Yale University CCAM, 2023-ongoing, Research and Development
• Artist in Residence: Integrated Digital Media, Tandon School of Engineering, NYU, ongoing
• N.E.A. Grant with Harvestworks and Paul Geluso, Director of Music Technology, Steinhardt School of Music, NYU, for sound follower instrument technology development, 2022
• Artist in Residence: Bell Labs, E.A.T. Program, 2020/21
• Artist in Residence: Pioneer Works Virtual Environments Lab,
• 2020•N.Y.S.C.A.: Independent Artist Film and Video Grant 2020

CREATIVE TEAM: 

• Siyuan Qiu: Lead Unity Developer for Visual and Interactive Design
• Nina Demirjian: Unity and AR Developer
• Tommy Martinez: Sound Technologist
• Quentin Chiapetta, Medianoise: Sound Design
• Paul Geluso: Spatialized Sound Design System
• Chorus: VO by Christina Campanella and John Rose
• Kepler: VO by Jim Fletcher
• Wufeng Kai: 3D Modeling and Unity Development
• Indira Ardolic: 3D Modeling

RECENT WORK BY TONI DOVE: The Dress That Eats Souls 

• Vimeo documentation includes project description and links to press: https://vimeo.com/268335347
• NYTimes Profile, Ted Loos: http://nytimes.com/2017/10/28/arts/toni-dove-dress.html

Selected Reviews: 

• Art News, Barbara MacAdam:  http://www.artnews.com/2018/03/15/vasari-diary-stuart-klipper-toni-dove-william-h-gass-reader/
• Herald Tribune, Marty Fugate: heraldtribune.com/entertainmentlife/20180322/art-review-multimedia-artist-toni-dove-imagines-brave-new-world-at-ringling

“Fans of offbeat cinema or science fiction might find aspects of Spectropia intriguing, because moments suggest an eerie blend of The Big Sleep, Brazil and La Jetee.”

The adventure continues as Spectropia inside Verna’s body in 1932 tries to solve some perplexing problems about her father’s disappearance in time. A mystery and a romantic triangle unfold across centuries as two women in one body drive a man crazy. More info in the Spectropia category to your right.

“Shifting eras and moods are powerfully evoked by the design, from the rich cinematography and costumes to Elliott Sharp’s eclectic soundtrack.”

– The Columbus Dispatch

Featuring the song “This Time, That Place” with vocals by Debbie Harry.

SPECTROPIA Episode #6: “Time is slipping”

Ghosts appear and the mystery deepens. What the Duck knows.

SPECTROPIA Episode #7: “Keeping secrets?”

An argument and a visit to Sally Rand. Collecting clues.

SPECTROPIA Episode #8:

“It’s not a straight line at all”

Stumped and stymied. Nothing is what it seems. Who is William?

SPECTROPIA Episode #9: “The triangle ends”

William lies and Verna gets fed up.

SPECTROPIA Episode #10:

“A private detective of memory”

Looked at in a certain way, time is random access.

Elliott Sharp composed the soundtrack for Spectropia. Check out his CD Spectropia Suite featuring the song “This Time, That Place”, Vocals by Debbie Harry and his CDIncident that includes songs written for Toni Dove’s Lucid Possession with vocals by Hai-Ting Chinn and Bora Yoon. More info below.

You can also find Spectropia on
Vimeo, Youtube and Reel House.

Stay Tuned for an app that will release Toni Dove’s Lucid Possession is 6 episodes. It will be released when we figure out how to do it!

We’ll keep you posted here on our progress and on some other projects involving robotic clothing.

Over two nights, MAY 4 and 5,  ROULETTE will present two radically different aspects of Toni Dove’s Spectropia.

FRIDAY MAY 4, Roulette presents Toni Dove’s Spectropia, a feature-length live-mix cinema event—a scratchable movie performed by Toni Dove and  R. Luke DuBois, artist and project software designer. Buy Tickets.

SATURDAY MAY 5, Elliott Sharp and The ’31 Band perform “Spectropia Suite”. Guest vocalist Barbara Sukowa sings the Spectropia song “This Time, That Place”. Toni Dove and R. Luke DuBois craft live video improvisations: a silent movie to accompany the score. Buy Tickets.

A sci-fi hybrid with themes of time travel, telepathy, and elements of film noir, Spectropia features live VJs orchestrating onscreen characters through a mix of film, performance, and a system of motion sensing that serves as a cinematic instrument.

Dove and DuBois scrub and navigate up to six layers of narrative video and sound—it’s like swimming through a movie! It’s a mystery, a puzzle, a time travel drama, and a romantic triangle—and it’s never quite the same twice. The first night you’ll see the full feature film in all its crazy complexity, then join Elliott Sharp, the composer of the music soundtrack with his ’31 Band, a nine-piece band from a parallel universe in 1931. It’s a thrilling cinematic happening. On Saturday, the film becomes an improvised silent movie.

Aleksa Palladino as Spectropia, Carlolyn McCormick as Verna, Richard Bekins as William, Simon Jones as The Duck,Helen Pickett as Sally.

See Episodes 1 and 2 from the soon to be released serial version of Spectropia at Streaming Museum.

“…it’s just plain cool to watch. Highly recommended.”

– Jeremy Barker, Culturebot

“Ms. Dove, together with co-performer and software engineer R. Luke Dubois, employs her “rig” to present “Spectropia,” an interactive film as immersive for its two real-time performers as it is for the audience. “

Photo: Brian Derballa for The Wall Street Journal

“The multilayered presentation of “Spectropia” is…unlikely to sound or appear familiar to anyone who hasn’t already witnessed it—or to anyone unfamiliar with Ms. Dove. Since the early 1990s, the artist has explored the intersection of narrative experience and audience participation through complex, interactive installations aided by advancing technology.”

-Bruce Bennett, Wall Street Journal

ELLIOTT SHARP

Photos: Peter Cherches, Sascha Rheker

The musicians of The ’31 Band, all of whom have extensive experience in many realms of music, have worked with Sharp on many projects, from the various Western traditions of jazz and classical music to the farthest reaches of contemporary music, free jazz, and improvisation. For this performance, The ’31 Band will include E# playing Bb & bass clarinets, tenor saxophone, guitar & computer processing;  Briggan Kraus – alto saxophone; Nate Woolley – trumpet; Art Baron; Curtis Fowlkes & Steve Swell – trombones; Anthony Coleman – piano; David Hofstra – string bass; and Don McKenzie – drums.

Photo: Andreas Sterzing

Barbara Sukowa is known for her performances onstage and in some of the most iconic films of the New German Cinema with directors such as Fassbinder and von Trotta. She has a career as a classical music narrator and singer and is the lead singer of the band the X-Patsys, which she founded with visual artists Jon Kessler and Robert Longo.

From Douglas Detrick -About.com/Jazz:

“Sharp’s compositions, which often evolve through repetition and micro-variation, mirror mathematical processes, but don’t sound dryly scientific. Sharp is interested in discovery, and similar to the way math attempts to capture the nature of the world through the study of patterns and deduction, Sharp’s music seeks musical truth by extracting the essence of a musical concept and exploring it through various perspectives.

“Spectropia Suite… features mosaics of noise, string quartet pieces, dark and alluring jazz piano solos, and music for large ensemble, with growling blues riffs reminiscent of the Fletcher Henderson band or the early Duke Ellington orchestra… a wide-ranging tour through jazz, contemporary concert music, and avant-garde noise, three main facets of Sharp’s work as a musician over the last 30 years.”

Purchase CD

Come and see us over two nights! They should be two very different experiences – and we think you’ll want to see them both.