"Teamwork"

(Forsythe working.)

Chuck Helm: Bill received the Wexner Prize in 2002. One of the intents of the Wexner Prize was that this not just be a one-time occasion, that these might be people who would come back to OSU and have further involvement with both the Wexner Center and with campus, and in this case, it's really borne fruit.

We're doing this exhibition of Bill's installation and his video-related work that show his idea of how he's extending choreographic thinking into new forms such as video as well as a sculptural installation and also a performance installation as well as a whole section devoted to the new web project he developed at OSU as well as material that relates to the evolution of that web project.

Maria Palazzi: We have had this opportunity with the Synchronous Objects project to bring together a group of students who come from different disciplines like computer science, design, dance, art, working together to understand what their disciplines bring to a project like this but also to come to an understanding of what other disciplines might bring to their work.

Norah Zuniga Shaw: For dancers, we'd like to communicate better about what we do, so we feel it's important to make ourselves more readable. But I also think knowing about how motion works, knowing about complex event perception, analyzing the complexity in this dance is relevant for thinking critically about visual literacy in this new century that we're in.

Palazzi: When we started to talk to Bill about the project we said, "Who is audience?" and the answer was "Everybody." So we thought about what it was we needed to do to communicate with everybody and I think this idea of solving a lot of this communication through visuals, using algorithmic techniques, using computer graphics, using animation. These are very contemporary ways in which young people are used to seeing information and they're very effective ways to take lots of information and translate it so they're understandable.

William Forsythe: This is research into a kind of a proto literature for dance, where other people could look at a dance as it plays out on a video and with these annotations overlaid upon them, could we understand very quickly what this dance was or how it was organized and what they're thinking about it, so that dance wasn't so frightening. Which is where you hear people going, "Oh, I don't want to go to see the dance, I don't understand dance." And we're like, "You just don't know how to look at it. Of course you understand it." And we've had the wonderful experience now showing people these annotations and people say literally within second, "Oh, I get it," and you're going, like, "Voila."

Helm: This has been the first time that there's been a significant showing of Bill's installation works in this country, and particularly a body of his work that can be shown at a place like OSU, which is also sponsoring the development of this new web project. So it kind of shows the important resources that a major university can bring for an artist like Bill. It's not everyplace you go to that can say, "Yes, we can do this full range of activity."

Palazzi: I think he was attracted to ACCAD and the Department of Dance because of this unique collaboration that we have between our research center and dance. I think that is one of the advantages of a big university like Ohio State: We have lots of expertise on our campus. One of the things that ACCAD serves as, is an umbrella or a gathering place for multidisciplinary approaches to problems.

Forsythe: OSU is a no brainer because the Dance Department and ACCAD are connected. I don't know where else that exists. It turned out OSU had everything in place that I needed. So, what's very interesting is that it's this issue of research is that no one was trying to define the way things should be, everyone's saying, "Well, what else could this look like?" So there was this wonderful feeling of a palate of opportunities that's being offered. That was very, very relaxing.

In 2002, the Wexner Center awarded William Forsythe its Wexner Prize, recognizing the world-renowned choreographer for "innovation in the arts." Forsythe, former director of Ballett Frankfurt, originally trained as classical ballet dancer and now directs The Forsythe Company, based in Germany.

Now, he's showing off two important collaborations with Ohio State:

• Synchronous Objects, a web project seeking to make dance accessible through visual communication techniques.
• Transfigurations, a Wexner Center exhibition that includes the first major U.S. showing of his installation works. (See exhibition-related events at the Wexner Center.)

The web project, which has been in the works for more than two years, will allow people around the world to see the notes Forsythe and Ohio State have added to his dance "One Flat Thing, reproduced."

Throughout the project, Forsythe traveled from Germany to campus to work with faculty and students. The project relied not only on ACCAD and the Department of Dance, which are long term collaborators, but also on experts in architecture, geography, visual communications, computer science and engineering, and statistics.

“OSU is a no brainer because the Dance Department and ACCAD are connected. I don't know where else that exists. It turned out OSU had everything in place that I needed. ”
—William Forsythe

"As a scientist, I've always believed that science can be artistic," says Noel Cressie, a statistics professor and the director of the spatial and environmental statistics program at Ohio State. "This is an exciting project, because I'm working with artists who believe that art can be scientific."

Credits:

Exhibition information and credits for Transfigurations

Credits for Synchronous Objects