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Production staff and cast are coming together, and the play is slated to take place in early Spring! :) Will provide updates soon -- once the venues are confirmed!
Project Description
Throughout the Bay Area, mountain lions are predators to deer, pigs, and other smaller mammals; they in turn fall prey to humans who have urbanized the region. Fragments is an exploration of the tension nested within human-mountain lion interaction; it identifies the role of mountain lions both as apex predators and as victims of accidental or unjust interactions with humans.
This series contains six works, from left to right:
Puma concolor, oil on canvas
Mountain lions, also known as cougars and pumas, are territorial animals that prefer low population densities. The average male mountain lion stands 60 to 76 centimeters (2.0 to 2.5 ft) tall, and is around 2.4 meters (8 ft) long from nose to tail, about 80 centimeters (32 in) of which is the tail. They are the fourth largest cats.
Hesitation, mixed media on canvas
The Bay Area has seen a recent influx in mountain lion sightings, and indeed, it seems reasonable that twenty-first century industrialized Americans are scared of these felines roaming near the homes in which young children are being raised.
Fragmentation, oil on canvas
Urbanization in the Bay Area has led to humans building homes and roads through the areas mountain lions once lived. As a result, mountain lion territory has been broken into pockets in a phenomenon called habitat fragmentation. This reduction of habitat size leads to crowding and increased competition, factors which play into species becoming threatened or endangered.
CARNIVORE, oil on canvas
In the Bay Area Puma Project, scientists led by Chris Wilmers are tracking the movement of mountain lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains. They are currently following 15 pumas by way of a GPS collar tracking system named CARNIVORE.
Oops, oil on canvas
Because mountain lions require a large territory, human-induced habitat fragmentation has led these lions to cross roads such as Highway 17 near Santa Cruz in search of more land, prey, and vegetation. Unfortunately, not all mountain lions make it safely across this freeway.
Resolution, mixed media on canvas
One method to counter the harmful effects of habitat fragmentation is to build wildlife overpasses across freeways to connect one side to the other. These overpasses are landscaped bridges for animals to walk across.
Special thanks to Xiaoze Xie and Chris Wilmers. Sponsored by SiCa Spark! Grant.
Our completed work was performed as the opening piece at the Dance Division’s “MOVES: Spring Student Works Showcase” which took place at 8:30pm and 10:00pm on Friday, May 13, 2011 at Roble Gym Studio 38. The finished product integrated the dance, interactive projection, and sound elements to present a unique collaborative work on the theme of memory.
We thank the Spark! Grant program for funding this project. The financial support supplied us with the equipment necessary to make this project a reality. It provided us with the means to thoroughly explore this partnership of artistic mediums, which has been inspiring and deeply gratifying. We also extend a special thanks to Diane Frank, Tony Kramer, Jaroslaw Kapuscinski, and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics for their help with this project.
Choreography/Dancers: Ali McKeon and Katherine Disenhof
Live Video Processing: Hunter McCurry
Sound: Chris Carlson (cloudveins.bandcamp.com)
me:
quiet, composed, and content above the water.
legs paddling frantically below the surface to stay afloat.
you:
quiet, composed, and content above the water.
that’s all i know.
When you look at another being, what do you think about? Chances are the surface dominates your thoughts. When we see the facade of something familiar, we often forget the complexities that exist within. We forget that hopes, dreams, anxieties flood other living beings. We forget about the bones, the tissues, the living breathing cells. We forget the effort that ducks put into floating serenely across the lake.
How does this general unawareness affect our perception of the world and ourselves? Where does the life go when we talk about another’s appearance? If we are not aware of it, does it even exist?
I’d like to ask you a favor: please have an experience with this piece. You may look briefly and walk away, or stand and stare at a single element. You may even feel the need to spend minutes inspecting the placement of every diagnostic scan. Feel free to get up close, to move away. Talk to someone near you, or to no one. Share your thoughts in the notebook below, or choose to keep them private. See if you can discern the place of separation between the surface appearance and the internal occurrence. Maybe you can find it. Maybe then you can explain it to me…
About the Artist:
My name is Fallon Segarra. I am a Biology major, an Art Practice minor, a long-time horse fanatic, and an aspiring equine orthopedic surgeon. I enjoy thinking up conceptual art projects that do not always work out aesthetically, but do always teach me something.
My work tends to be photographic and hand-held. This is my first attempt at anything you cannot put in a carry-on suitcase.
With the performances only two weeks away, our new work is finally coming together. We have most of our materials and have been able to work with the projection images in the studio space. Moreover, the music and choreography are almost complete. Hopefully we will be able to finish the piece by the end of next week.
This new work will be performed as a part of the Dance Division's Student Choreography Showcase in Roble Gym on Friday, May 13th, at 8:30pm and 10:00pm.
A bit about our project, Re-:
Inspired by SiCa’s theme of Memory and the work of Frieder Weiss, we are working on a collaborative work between dance and an interactive motion tracking video system that will be performed as part of the Dance Division’s Student Works Concert on May 13, 2011 at 8:30pm and 10:00pm in Roble Gym. With Ali and me serving as both choreographers and dancers, the work’s foundation will be rooted in dance. An interactive computer system designed by Hunter will be strongly integrated through the use of live motion tracking technology and projection. To our knowledge, no work of this kind has been created at Stanford ever before. While dance is frequently performed on the typical stage venue and interactive sound and video systems are developed separately at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), this will be the first time that the two creative mediums join forces.
This unique partnership between dance and technology will generate an interesting dialogue on the idea of memory. On one hand, the overall conceptual basis of the work is cause and effect. The learned choreography that the dancers perform acts as the cause that stimulates the motion-capture system and affects the nature of the images projected onto the screen. In this way, the dancers represent memory while the projections make those memories tangible through visual abstraction. Additionally, the narrative context for the work will further explore memory. Although the choreography will not tell a linear story, it will subtly evoke the idea that the performers are reminiscing on memories of the past. The projections might include images such as water effects that reflect pictures (representing memories) which the dancers distort by using their movements to stimulate ripples throughout the projection.
This affiliation with memory is echoed in our project’s title, Re-. Through the process of developing the outline for this work, we were consistently using words containing the prefix “re-”: react, reflect, rewind, recount, retrace, reflex, etc. We then came to realize that, by definition, the prefix “re-” attaches the theme of memory to nearly any word that it is paired with. Thus, we have decided to title the project “Re-” because of the fact that this work will provide a multidimensional commentary on the theme of memory.
Progress Update:
While we have made a lot of progress so far, there is still a lot of work to be done before the May 13th performances. Due to the fact that this is much more complicated that a typical dance work, most of our group meetings have been more about planning logistics than actual dance rehearsals. For instance, we had to meet with the Dance Division’s facilities manager to ensure that our equipment would meet the fire codes to Roble Gym and that we would not blow the fuses to the dance studio. Ali and I also met with the four other choreographers who will be presenting work in the performances to discuss the format of the evening. Our group also struggled for a little while as we tried to figure out the best way to obtain two 7x10 foot rear projector screens that would stand on their own.
Meanwhile, we found a great music artist (Chris Carlson) who is currently composing the score for our work. Hunter is busy working on some fantastic projection images. Ali and I have made good progress in the studio, but we still have a long way to go. Here’s a quick glimpse of what we have so far:
