Israel & イスラエル from YCAM on Vimeo.
In the period of November 2017-February 2019, I was part of the creation and developer team of the last production of YCAM (Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media) called “Israel & イスラエル“. This is a collaboration started in 2017 between the internationally renowned flamenco dancer Israel Galvan, YCAM InterLab, and Qosmo. The piece was premiered at YCAM in January 2019.
The result is a one-hour performance where the great zapateado dancing style of Israel Galvan fuses together with cutting-edge interactive technologies. Israel Galvan will dance with another Israel, an AI agent that has learned his style and will improvise with him. Such AI will manifest itself in a variety of robotic systems, that gives to the whole performance a very physical impact.
Within this project, together with the team of YCAM InterLab, we developed a series of devices, from haptic systems to transmit the dancer’s force to the audience, spatial soundscapes, solenoid-driven percussions, and experimented with interactions between a flamenco dancer and an AI system.
Especially, I developed the iGSR, a wearable device used to process the movements produced by the dancer’s body, like his arms, feet, hands, and head. These were used to create new relationships between the dancer’s motions and sounds generated in real-time.
World Premiere
YCAM (Studio A), Yamaguchi (JP)
2/02/2019 – 3/02/2019
European Premiere
Biennale des arts numériques – NEMO, Paris (FR)
24 – 26/10/2019
Research and Development
The performance was developed through three main creation sessions with Israel Galvan (and his assistants), YCAM InterLab, and Qosmo. This video reports the process and results of the first session of January-February 2018.
Israel & イスラエル（Teaser） from YCAM on Vimeo.
Physical manifestations of Israel’s AI mirror
Motion capture tool