Compositions for Bit

Music performance technology development and composition for interactive art performance by Katherine Behar, 2010.

Compositions for Bit is an interactive art concert that paid tribute to Disney’s 1982 movie Tron and its handmade vision of the digital; the performance took place on the day before the sequel, Tron Legacy, came out in theaters.

Presented at Judson Church in New York, the performance was designed as an immersive experience. As though stepping into the game grid in Tron, the audience was bathed in projections and enveloped in quadrophonic sound.

Dancers wearing Wiimotes performed inside sculptures of Bit, a floating polyhedron from the 1982 movie, who is the first CGI movie character. The Wiimotes were reprogrammed to allow the dancers’ movements to control original sound scores. Performing choreography inspired by yogic contortions, the dancers navigated the close confines of their shapes to flip and roll the Bits around the room. They were visible through windows in the shapes and via wireless video feeds. The videos, displayed on large geometric screens that hung above the space, were mixed live during the performance, blending the dancers’ real time feeds with Tron‘s stark landscapes, bobbing Bits, and video game footage from the Tron arcade game. The audience was invited to move freely around the space and interact with the dancers.