Synchronous Objects

SYNCHRONOUS OBJECTS

Synchronous Objects flows from dance to data to objects.

Interactive video – information graphics – software tools – animation

what else might this dance look like?

Choreographic visualization reveals deep structure in choreographic masterworks and places dance at the center of interdisciplinary knowledge exchange, extending dance knowledge beyond the studio and stage.

Creative Directors:

Norah Zuniga Shaw, Maria Palazzi and William Forsythe

The Cue Visualizer is an interactive tool in which users can view the cue system, in One Flat Thing, reproduced, over time.

Published online March 2009 and launched at the Wexner Center for the Arts

This collaborative screen-based interactive project has been called paradigm shifting and has attracted millions of unique visitors online as well as hundreds of thousands of repeat users. Originally published online and available as open-source resource Synchronous Objects (2009), focuses on choreographic structure in a single masterwork by choreographer William Forsythe.

The dance is One Flat Thing, reproduced by William Forsythe.

The data are numeric translations of the choreographic structures in the work (cue, alignments, themes) as articulated by the choreographer and dancers.

The objects are a range of visualizations that step out in degrees of difference from the choreographic resource of the dance. In this project we ask “what else, besides the body, might physical thinking look like?” And our response is a series of 20 animations, interactive artworks and annotated videos visualizing deep structure within the work and repurposing it for myriad parallel virtual manifestations.

Looking at the dance from above, patterns are illuminated through video processing that reveal fleeting alignments, bursts of turns, clusters of action and horizontal and vertical flows. Credit: Synchronous Objects Project, The Ohio State University and The Forsythe Company
Tour of Interface. The original work is created in Flash which is no longer supported online.

http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu

Funded by The Forsythe Foundation, Battelle Endowment, and The Ohio State University

Selected awards and exhibitions

Featured:

New York Times, Sunday International Herald Tribune, Frankfurt Allgemeine, Infoaesthetics.com, VisualComplexity.com, Generator.x.com

Awards:

Communication Arts 2010 – Winner “Interactive Annual”AdobeMax 2009 Awards – Finalist

Webby Awards 2009 – NominatedColumbus Society of Communicating Arts – Creative Best 2009 – Winner 

“Best in Category-Interactive” and 

“Judge’s Choice Award”

Curated Exhibitions:

2018           

Centre Pompidou

Paris, France

Coding the World: The Body in Code

Curator: Frederic Migayrou

2013                

Hygiene Museum

Dresden, Germany

Dance! Moves that Move Us!            

Curator: Colleen Schmitz

2012   

Simon Center Gallery

Stony Brook University, NY USA

SYNERGY Exhibition                 

Curator: Flo Tarjan

BUDA Art Center

Kortrijk, Belgium

Curator: Jonas Rutgeerts

2011                

Taipei Arts Festival

Taipei, Taiwan

William Forsythe Choreographic Objects Exhibition   

Columbia College

Chicago, IL

Digital Incarnate Exhibition     

San Francisco Dancefilm Festival

San Francisco, CA USA

2009                

Wexner Center for the Arts

Columbus, OH USA

Curator: Charles Helm

SIGGRAPH

New Orleans, LA USA

Information Aesthetics Showcase