[dance-tech] èé: See You in Walhalla - World Premier - www.amorphy.org/imap

Dear list,
 
This work would be nice.

Warmest Regards,
Yukihiko YOSHIDA


PRESS RELEASE
World Premiere of new Live Computer Game âSee You in Walhallaâ
September 14, 2006


IME Industrial Performing Arts Complex - Athens (Greece)
And two other European cities (Sofia and Amsterdam) connected live through the 
Internet.

The Athens based performance group amorphy.org, with support of the Cultural 
Center of Kifissia and the EU Culture 2000 Funding Scheme, is proud to present 
the world premiere of âSee you in Walhalla,â a distributed live performance 
game connecting three cities â Amsterdam, Athens and Sofia.  This multi-media 
dance/theatre project, collaboratively created by artists and designers from 
four different European partner sites in Greece, The Netherlands, Germany and 
Bulgaria, presents the unusual journey of a video game âavatarâ through a 
haunted urban industrial landscape composed of digital fragments from the 
spectacle of Europe.

The audience in Athens is invited to witness the exciting premiere of the first 
live 3D computer game enacted by three dis/located performers simultaneously, 
with Ermira Goro playing the âavatarâ on location in Athens, while Nancy 
Mauro-Flude and Ivaylo Dimitrov are streamed via web-cams into the game but are 
located in Amsterdam and Sofia respectively, and watched by local audiences in 
those cities. At the same time, âSee you in Walhallaâ can be witnessed live 
on the Internet, where online players can log on to offer their comments and 
reactions to the performance/game.  The Athens premiere represents the first 
leg of a European tour scheduled for 2006-2007 seasons.

Description of the new work:

An average man.  Slightly obsessive, familiarly lonely.  He eats his green 
apples, rendered phosphorescent in the glow of his computer screen.   A new 
video game, See You in Walhalla â âin this place everyone who is not in 
jail works for the police.â  He creates his avatar.  The gameâs purpose - 
to guide this avatar, born as an âemptyâ shell, through various journeys 
taking place in an imaginary city-scape morphed out of Amsterdam, Athens and 
Sofia, with the final goal of rendering the avatar into a more âhuman 
beingâ, capable of surviving the density, danger and psychosis of urban 
existence, at a time when Europe is undergoing its own nightmares of economic 
and political integration. Paradoxically, integration in this haunted and 
visually disturbing game is experienced as a series of physical and psychic 
dis-sociations.  The Player gets more involved with the game, losing a sense of 
reality and becoming more socially autistic, while his avatar slowly recovers a 
sensibility for human inter-action which is punished by the pressures and 
regulations, as well as the hyper-euphoric spectacular image-scapes, of which 
the urban rhythms of existence are determined.

I am Amalia, if you hurry me I will say I am Molly, I am her, locked up in the 
big house, desperate, pursued by Rosasâs mazorca, I am Irish, I will say 
then, I am her and I am also the others, I was the others, I am Hipolita, the 
gimp, the little cripple, I tottered slightly when I walked, Hipolita, I say to 
him, and he smiles, Hipolita, with âthe gloves on her small handsâ, she ran 
away with the psychopath, the big castrated psychopath who could tell the 
future on Tarot cards, he had a scar on his groin from here to here.

Three performers inter-connected, a complex web of fantastical events seen from 
pre-recorded film, live-web cam and audio streams from Amsterdam and Sofia, 
interactively controlled sound and video based determined by movements of the 
performer in Athens, and unpredictable site-specific performances in Sofia and 
Amsterdam â these components compose the 3D live game environment which 
promises Player and Avatar a life after death (Walhalla).

The protagonist of this game is not an ego-shooter, but a flÃneur, a cyber 
wo-man who discovers herself as an anonymous face in the multitude, but who is 
free to probe her surroundings for clues and hints that may go unnoticed by the 
others. The Avatar-wanderer does not abandon herself/himself in the crowd, but 
actively participates, observes, revolts, and intervenes in her surroundings, 
and just as she experience her âunbearable lightness of beingâ, she is 
nearly killed in an accident.

This theatrical computer game explores the âsystemâ of deadly possibilities 
that lurk in the entropic cities of late capitalism, amongst the facades of 
glamour, heroic icons and consumer fetishes which, like a dream, do not exist 
in reality or can fall apart in a moment, setting fire to the outskirts of our 
imagination or flooding our delusional consciousness.

*        *         *

Initial Concept by: Tzeni Argyriou, Ioanna Tsinividi, and Ash Bulayev

Tzeni Argyriou (Concept and Direction); Zoe Chatziantoniou, Ioanna Tsinividi, 
and Ash Bulayev (Creative Team); Tzeni Argyriou, Zoe Chatziantoniou, Ermira 
Goro, and Ash Bulayev (Choreography); Ioanna Tsinividi (Video 
Direction/Editing); Zoe Chatziantoniou and Ash Bulayev (Dramaturgy/Text 
Composition); Stavros Gasparatos (Music Composition); Arjen Keesmaat and 
Stoycho Stanchev (System Design/Programming); Paul Verity Smith (Sensor 
Development); Kostantinos Kipriotakis (Stage Design); Sakis Birbillis (Lighting 
Design); Despina Makarouni (Costume Design); Nikos Makris (3D Animation); 
Christopher Brellis (Designer); Lena Kitsopoulou and Ash Bulayev (Voiceovers)

Web interaction design and logistics by: Sher Doruff (Waag/Holland), Johannes 
Birringer (InteraktionsLabor/Germany), and Galia Dimitrova (InterSpace/Bulgaria)

Performed by: Ermira Goro (Athens), Nancy Mauro-Flude (Amsterdam), and Ivaylo 
Dimitrov (Sofia)

Production Crew:

Maria Kerasioti (Lead Project Facilitator/ C.C. of Kifissia), Maria Ladaki 
(Project Coordinator/C.C. of Kifissia), Eleni Katsarou (Project Coordinator & 
Production Manager/amorphy.org), Galia Dimitrova (Project 
Coordinator/InterSpace), Johannes Birringer (Project 
Coordinator/InteraktionsLabor), Floor Van Spaendonck (Project Coordinator/de 
Waag), Dyonisis Petrouchopoulos (Director of Photography), Katerina 
Stasinopoulou (Co-Video Editor), Christopher Brellis/antidot (Web-Design/Poster 
Design), Guy Stefanou (Technical Director)

Logistics:

Date: September 14th, 2006

Time: 21:00 (Athens/Sofia) & 20:00 (Amsterdam)

Locations:

Athens/Greece (IME Industrial Complex, Building 5)

Amsterdam/Netherlandsâ(Waag Society, Nieuwmarkt Square)

Sofia, Bulgariaâ(Red House for Culture & Debate,â15 Ljuben Karavelov Street)

Info:  <http://www.amorphy.org/imap> www.amorphy.org/imap

* For press photographs or any other information regarding the show or project, 
please contact: info@xxxxxxxxxxx

Development History

With funding support of the European Culture 2000 Framework Program, the 
project development of âSee you in Walhallaâ began in September 2005, and 
after extensive filming on location and digital choreography and computer 
programming workshops in the various partner sites , the new work will be shown 
as a live networked performance on September 14th, 2006 in Amsterdam, Athens, 
and Sofia. 

The collaborative project, implemented through a trans-European network of four 
participating media art organizations, is dedicated to fostering new and 
innovative works of art through effective integration of interactive 
technologies and live performance practices.

Collaborative Network of Co-Organizers
 
* amorphy.org (Athens, Greece) -  <http://www.amorphy.org> www.amorphy.org 

amorphy.org is a non-for-profit organization devoted to production of original 
works of live performance and installation, through constant pursuit of 
practical investigation fusing media art technologies and live performance 
practices. 

* InteraktionsLabor (GÃttelborn, Germany) â www.interaktionslabor.de

InteraktionsLabor, under the direction of  Johannes Birringer, is an 
organization which focuses on research in communications technologies, 
interactive media, performance and virtual environments. 

* InterSpace (Sofia, Bulgaria) â www.i-space.org <http://www.i-space.org/> 

InterSpace is a New Media Art Center that works for the establishment of a 
social attitude to new media art forms, through the development of alternative 
means and possibilities of artistic expression in new media technologies.

* De Waag (Amsterdam, Holland) â www.waag.org <http://www.waag.org/> 

Waag Society for Old and New Media is a knowledge institute operating on the 
cutting edge of culture and technology in relation to society, education, 
government and industry, established in 1994. 

* Cultural Center of Kifissia (Athens, Greece) - www.kifissia.gr


C.C. of Kifissia various courses for painting, Greek traditional dancing, 
theatre, jewelry , photography, batik, mosaic and so on. The municipal cultural 
centre highly supports and promotes cultural creativity.     

Associated Partners

PACT Zollverein - Essen, Goethe Institute, Red House For Culture and Debate, 
IKS, IME Research Facility, Ipsilon Production Company, Brunel University, 
i-DAT/University of Plymouth.


-----------------------------------
ash bulayev/amorphy.org
artistic director
-----------------------------------
Address:
Alopis 58, Kato Petralona
11853 Athens Greece
email:  ash@xxxxxxxxxxx
web:    www.amorphy.org
mobile: + 30 6937 20 33 00
work:   + 30 210 34 56 341

Other related posts: