Daito Manabe x Rhizomatiks Research x ELEVENPLAY – phosphere

Daito Manabe returns to TodaysArt with the national premiere of one of his newest projects: ‘phosphere’, a large-scale three-dimensional performance he directed for his art studio Rhizomatiks Research and dance troupe ELEVENPLAY. In ‘phosphere’, the boundaries between the digital and physical fade as dance and digital art merge in an almost surreal performance.

The project consists of a dancing space as well as a perfectly synchronized audiovisual installation that combines mirrors, smoke machines, lasers and video projectors to create a full spatial experience. ‘phosphere’ is groundbreaking in terms of media technology, as it involves omnidirectional video projections that interact with the dancers, using motion capture to trace movements and instantaneously converting these into video.

‘phosphere’ is inspired by the first Bauhaus dances of Oskar Schlemmer, where dance was deconstructed in geometric, man-made spaces for the first time. Under Schlemmer, the human body became an elemental component of dance, integrating into a spatial geometrical whole along with light, color, and rhythm. The specific geometries used in ‘phosphere’ (sphere of light) were inspired by the crystallization process of minerals and the beautiful shapes resulting from this.

Tokyo-based artist Daito Manabe is a renowned interaction designer, programmer and DJ, and co-director of Rhizomatiks Research. The firm’s division engages in R&D in the field of technical and artistic expression, mostly in the form of media- and data art. The company has collaborated with Japanese dance troupe ELEVENPLAY on a number of projects, exploring the possibilities of virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and robotic applications within dance performance.