CultureMoves

The Dance (Algo)Rhythms video installation represented a digital and interactive artwork, a human-computer interaction project in which the user experience is not only contemplative, but it also interacts with the visual content.

Its main objective was to narrate the Apuan Riviera, proposing a generative storytelling created through the re-use of video and photographic content that represent this Tuscan territory and that are reprocessed by using computational algorithms.

About 10.000 digital images were used to create the video installation. The proposed technique needs to process a great amount of content in order to work properly: more content is processed, more refined is the clusterization (mainly by colour).

The content was equally collected from the three archives (approx. 3,300 each): from the historical archive of the Private Marble Railway were used all the digitised items, form the Provincial Archive of Massa-Carrara was made a selection of the content that better represent the Apuan Riviera, while from Europeana were used mainly content about dance and marble.

In order to facilitate the understanding of the video installation as well as to create an immersive set-up, the video installation was preceded by some explanatory (and interactive!) panels.

As welcome panel we realised a brief overview of the whole project, with a preview of the concept behind the video installation. The visitors got the chance to see an image of themselves generated using small photos representing the Apuan-Riviera region and take a selfie as a rememberance. 





Entering into the stage room, visitors could find an immersive exhibition of images from the territory in order to contextualise the objective of the performance for the promotion of the Apuan Riviera, with a symbolic passage from physical and printed images to digital ones. 

The video installation was the final part of this brief path, where visual contents become a digital scenography projected on a screen located behind the performance stage. 

Visitors could here interact with the video installation: a sensor camera recorded the movement with a live change of the generated content. During the day the video installation was freely open to visitors, which included 4 high-school classes.

The video installation was then enlivened by dancers who, participating in the preparatory activities before the beginning of Internet Festival, created a dedicated choreography to perform in line with technology and storytelling, blending all these together to create an emotional and innovative artwork.    

Three kinds of scenarios to be displayed were created, each of them referred to a natural aspect that represents the Riviera Apuana as emerged during the Carrara LabDay: (1) Sea landscape, (2) Mountain landscape, (3) Marble quarry landscape.

They were elaborated specifically to dialogue with three live performances and each natural aspect was associated with a type of dance: (1) Classical dance, (2) Hip-Hop dance, (3) Historical dance. 

These associations were the results of a creative and artistic elaboration of StudioRF as well as of the collaboration with the three artists selected: classical and historical dance were local stakeholders involved since the early phases of the project, while for hip-hop dance we contacted a school located in Pontedera - Pisa - that already collaborated with Internet Festival for the relationship between performance and technologies.

Footage of the video installation was then used to promote the territory, effectively producing a new promotional product for tourism purposes: