"Trails of a Yakshagana" is a video that captures the essence of a solo Yakshagana performance. The visually appealing video creates a rhythmic experience for the viewers as they follow the dancer's movements. The video, which lasts for 2.5 minutes and loops continuously, uses the power of a computer's graphical processing unit (GPU) to create a motion trail of the performance. Inspired by the traditional dance form of Yakshagana from the coastal Karnataka region, the video gives a modern glimpse of its Navras.
The artist transformed a Yakshagana dance video into a 2D puppetry animation, where a puppet mimics the dancer's movements, creating a "moving sculpture." Due to restrictions on sound at the silent airport, the artist focused on the dancer's body language and expressions to convey emotions such as joy, sorrow, bravery, and anger. By highlighting the viewer's emotions through movement, colour, and motion blur, the digital art piece aims to convey the richness, playfulness, and ephemeral nature of the performance and the art form. In this piece, the artist emphasizes the adbhuta and shanta rasa, representing a sense of wonder followed by tranquility.
While the language barrier may prevent many newcomers to the city of Bengaluru from exploring Yakshagana, I hope that this art work will trigger more interest in it. Performance arts like Yakshagana are beacons of openness, inclusivity and expression that our society should strive for.
ARTISTIC PROCESS
There is no one right way to start the conversation around how this artwork i.e. Trails of a Yakshagana emerged, but I would like to briefly discuss it in the context of my interpretation of Bharatamuni’s Natyashastra, dance as an art form, and how it connects with my work in generative art. After that, I can talk about how I want to showcase my work to my audience and discuss the narrative behind it. This will lead to what are the building blocks of this artwork.
1. RESEARCH & CONCEPTUALISATION (Exploring Natyashastra)
What makes Natyashastra special from other aesthetic ‘frameworks’ is its scope & that it originates from the subjectivity of the viewer. In its core essence, Bharatamuni recognizes how humans usually have static states of emotions or bhaav that are heightened upon their exposure to an experience (which we can call ‘art’). Along with sensory impressions conveyed via sound, color, etc., and given the mimetic nature of human intellect, these heightened emotions or rasa are also invoked by seeing someone else’s expression of joy, sorrow, bravery, anger, etc.
The profoundness of this concept can be seen in dance as an art discipline. Dance with its engagement with its surroundings has the ability to weave stories in space and in time. As a continuous act of using body poses as a sculpture, a performer molds the physical as well as mental consciousness of the viewer and their surroundings. It has hence been a source of inspiration for other forms of art and design like architecture, paintings, sculptures, rock carvings, etc. from ancient to modern times. Furthermore, when this is coupled with music, narration, costumes, makeup, props, etc. the possibilities of theatrical story-telling grow beyond imagination. Such grandeur can be witnessed in the traditional dance forms of India. And while all these dance forms differ slightly in narrative patterns, gesticulation, costumes, and the rasa they commonly depict, only a few can compare the broad range of theatrics that the Yakshagana dance form encompasses. For this reason and the fact that it is an art form local to the state of Karnataka where my artwork would be displayed, it becomes my area of inquiry.
However, traditional media cannot capture or showcase Yakshagana dance in the way it shapes the space around it. This can however be visualized using image processing algorithms that take the video footage as an input. This adds a new dimension to the performance where dance as a product of time becomes visible to the onlooker. The artwork, Trails of a Yakshagana, uses creative coding to present the indigenous theatre performance by Yakshagana artists in a memory-based space-time continuum.
2. ALGORITHMIC EDITING (Codifying visuals)
The algorithm to create the artwork comprises of three major components:
1. Video Import and Basic Adjustments
The base content for the installation consists of archival Yakshagana footage that has been televised in regional or national channels or recorded for academic or documentation purpose (Although these would add the cultural value of the artwork, they can be replaced by better quality and recent videos of Yakshagana dance on the Internet).
The content of these videos has to be reviewed, their quality has to be optimized and the noise in them had to be cleared and edited to create a cohesive narration. The narration can either depict a small story or prasanga in the form of a montage that might be coherent with the theme of arrival or journey. Since Yakshagana derives its plot from puranic epics, this theme can be picked up from stories around Ramayana and Mahabharata.
There are obviously certain angles and shots that are desirable over others to achieve the desired result. Those decisions had to be taken before any editing as the video was intended to look like a single-shot video. A mid or long-shot camera position with static background was ideal. Comparing few images below for reference:
Mid-shot camera angle has the remarkable ability to capture the essence of a performance through the intricate details of hand poses and facial expressions. This technique provides a captivating glimpse into their emotions and intentions. It allows the audience to delve deeper into the character's psyche, as every subtle movement and delicate expression holds a wealth of hidden meaning. With the mastery of this mid-shot camera angle, filmmakers and photographers can weave a compelling narrative, conveying the performer's complexities with unparalleled depth and intimacy.
In filmmaking, the Long Shot camera angle serves as a powerful tool to capture the full breadth of movement and interaction within a scene. This particular technique allows the viewer to appreciate the entirety of a character's body language and gestures in relation to the surrounding negative space. By showcasing the distance between the subject and the environment, the Long Shot engenders a sense of context and visual storytelling, providing a deeper understanding of the scene's dynamics.
2. Feedback Mechanism
The edited footage serves as an input to a Python image processing algorithm that detects motion in the video and depicts it as a residual image, morphing across the canvas with time. This creates a blur effect based on a few parameters that are tweak-able in the program. Some of them are blur length and duration, movement speed, motion detection threshold, noise reduction, chroma balance, etc. Permutations of these effects can be discussed further and tested on-site to determine more accurate values. A Touchdesigner program is configured to work on a rapid prototyping model so that testing time is reduced and results can be compared side-by-side. This will give the ability to take an iterative design approach.
3. Colour treatment
The residual image is then treated with a color scheme that depicts the mood that the video is displaying in the video. In Natyashastra, all these nine emotions have been connected with colors that signify all emotions or rasas. The Aura of a frightened person is black, and the aura of an angry person is red. The nine colors that signify each emotion are Dark Blue (Shringara), White (Hasya), Grey (Karun), Red (Raudra), Orange or Bright White (Veer), Black (Bhayanak), Blue (Bheebhatsya), Yellow (Adbhut), and White (Shanta).
Relevant color schemes can be extracted from famous Indian paintings depicting appropriate rasas and can be incorporated as our color treatment. Again, changing this quite simple in the program and can be tested and finished. There will also the need to add a transition between two different color schemes.
There are many challenges and logistic issues that were witnessed in the process of installing this video, most prominent being the Covid pandemic. I commend the curatorial team who was able to push our vision forward in these troubled times. Especially when people were both questioning and realizing the important of art in daily life. Thanks to BIAL Art director Yamini Telkar and Bhargavi Raju for bringing one of my experiments out for the world to see!
Alongside is my artist interview (not something I would like to remember 😀).