TYPE/DYNAMICS: A Stunning Dance Film Inside a Chamber of Reactive Data
Two dancers collide in a chamber filled with liquid light and, for a moment as chance as their encounter, the chaos of the universe begins to take form. If it sounds like science fiction, you’re not too far off—this is TYPE/DYNAMICS, the new film from Ruben van Leer that will serve as the introduction to Symmetry, the opera-film shot inside the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), when it makes its North American debut October 10 at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival.
TYPE/DYNAMICS, which features dancer Valentina Scaglia, was shot inside the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, where an immersive, responsive installation of the same name, created by LUSTlab—led by Dimitri Nieuwenhuizen—has been pitting viewers inside a real-life matrix since 2013. Says van Leer, “The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and LUSTlab approached choreographer Lukas Timulak and me to create a short dance film in the actual museum, surrounded by the running Type/Dynamics interactive installation. The idea was to touch the theme of ‘Typography as Carrier of Data.’ I wanted to add a cinematic and emotional layer to the interactive installation.”
The result resounds in TYPE/DYNAMICS, which transports viewers unable to visit the museum into its mutable world via dance. “Nothing in the gallery space stands still,” van Leer explains; “all information continuously moves.”
Says van Leer, “We wanted the choreography to show the curiosity of this digital chamber. The characters explore and touch each other and become human for a moment. In the end they merge again with the data they came from. From where they began, they also end up… like a loop.”
Now, you can premiere TYPE/DYNAMICS on your own, exclusively on The Creators Project. Check out the film following exclusive making-of images from van Leer and company, below:
TYPE/DYNAMICS from TRUTH.IO on Vimeo.