Melting art forms
In his theater piece ‘Good Canary’ John Malkovich uses digital video projection to create an ever changing environment for his protagonists. The moving images transmit the main character’s troubled state of mind, altered by drug abuse and profound anxiety. The static notion of theater decors is left behind and instead there is a visual background constantly adapting to the atmosphere of the scene.
This way watching the real-time theater piece comes close to watching a movie. On the other hand, we had the movie mimicking theater in Lars von Trier’s ‘Dogville’. The bare setting with few static decors and nothing more than chalk lines on the floor to indicate walls is all the viewer is confined to. Like in a theater show, this movie makes an appeal to the audience’s imagination rather than create a detailed visual illusion. The boundaries of different art forms melt, allowing means of expression belonging originally to a different domain.
One more example of interacting art forms is this tango argentino performance, danced on a video projection and making use of sensors to accompany the dancers’ moves by synchronously generated images. It is called iTango and the music is from the movie ‘Fabuleux destin d’Amelie Poulain‘.