Your Presence in VR

A black wooden floor is situated in the middle of the room. Behind the floor is a vertical screen. The screen is 3,4 x 3,5 meters like the floor. The two act as sides of a kube. Upon entering this kube, a visitors movements cause electronic sounds to appear. More specificaly movements in predefined areas trigger short sequences of images on the projected background. As a backdrop I created a timelaps-recording of a landscape north of Amsterdam where typically the old dutch masters would paint because of the special quality of the light. The timelaps recording lasted for a whole day. The projected result was a sequence of 150 images, mapped on a sensor inside the kube. So vertical movements on a specific location resulted in stepping through the day in time. Movement in one of the eight sensors more or less located towards the corners of the kube resulted in acurately moving through a series of images of my hands in the landscape pointing out the size and location of these sensors if they were places synchronous in the landscape if the frame of the landscape was not a window but a mirror. I was playing with the notion of matter and antimatter and poetic license.

An interview by Rob Perree in Kunstbeeld march 1989

Didactiek in de ruimte met Andries Lohmeijer, Ria Brandon, Toon Ariens Op het Albeda College Rotterdam Project BVE96143

Publication about Kolmans Kube text by Inamoto, Axis vol. 58 Fred Kolman’s 'Kolman’s Kube’ has evolved in a number of stages. First the motion of a body in a dance was translated into MIDI controlling electronic sounds. Recently the system can control images as well as sounds. When you move around the room a camera records your position and changes the images and lighting effects projected on the wall by a video projector. Just by moving through the room transforms it into a different configuration. The unadorned human body changes the environment. This is better than virtual reality with those goggles.

Movements by visitors on this black floor trigger and control electronic sounds.

Stereo video in the Google VR180 format with additional text layers or other info-graphics or 3d content.

Artists Performers Actors Dancers Musicians captured in VR180 stereo

This clip is taken from a TV broadcast in 1994 by VPRO called De Opmars, Nederland gaat digitaal

VR Days Europe Amsterdam 2019 A report of the three day festival in VR180 stereo video Work in progress

As a dancer, performer I wanted to play and control my synthesizer from within the dance. While listening to the sonic landscapes like 'Homer Hossa' created by Boris Blank and Dieter Meier from Yello https://soundcloud.com/boris-blank-avant-garden as well as listening to Brian Eno on Albums like 'On land' and 'Apollo' in the early eighties I had the desire to literally step in those landscapes and perform my Thai Chi based movements. It came to my mind that it was feasible to control certain aspects of electronic synthesized sounds in real time with gestures seen through a videocamera, allowing the dancer/performer to create the music from the dance instead of dancing to music. This was back 1985.