There was a time when geeky science nerds and la-la liberal arts majors kept their distance, each speaking a language the other found foreign.
These days, the worlds of art and technology are ever more intertwined and overlapping. Contemporary artists in all disciplines embrace technology as a tool for enhancing their creative vision, and techno-geeks are exploring how data mining, social media and complex programming can expand the definition of art itself.
But too often the mingling of media results in side-by-side juxtaposition rather than true fusion: A dance with a video projection as backdrop. A gallery exhibit with QR codes replacing title tags. Youtube videos substituting for publicity releases.
When choreographer Jamie Jewett talks about melding dance and technology, that's not what he has in mind at all.
"I want to create a synthesis, where the different elements are not disparate, but come together as one," says the founder of Lostwax Multimedia Dance, the second of the Ringling's NowHERE New Stages series performers.
"You don't think wheels, doors, steering wheel, axles. ... You think 'car.' I want to take music, dance and video and make it come together into some kind of singularity, so instead of different elements that don't talk to each other, all of these ideas can be braided together into one dialogue."
That was the driving force behind the piece his 10-year-old company will present this week at the Historic Asolo Theater. (The name "Lostwax" comes from an ancient casting process where a form is fitted over a wax copy, which is then heated, runs out and becomes "lost.)
"Particular," Jewett's fifth collaboration with composer, artist and computer programmer R. Luke DuBois — whose work is featured in a concurrent exhibition at the museum — is the latest in his explorations into melding the sonic, visual and physical worlds.
Earlier, "Blinking" used the pattern and rhythm of the blinking eye as a rhythmic structure, expressed in sound, light and projected videos that broke apart like giant puzzle pieces. "Melt" involved dancers wearing tiny wireless video cameras and infrared sensors that controlled the mixing of live video with original footage of glaciers, ice caves and the cycle of water. "Snowblind" tapped into today's overwhelming world of digital information, where filtering itself creates a vision, like an attempt to see within a snowstorm of flurrying flakes.
"Particular," which debuted in October of 2012, was initially inspired by a video that made the rounds on social media, depicting a natural phenomenon known as a murmuration — a densely swirling flock — of thousands of starlings. Jewett's title reflects the multiple meanings both of the word itself — in addition to usual definition of odd, specific or unique, there is the allusion in computer lingo to particle and wave theory — and of the worlds Jewett wanted to explore.
"I was very interested in how the starlings spark forms in space as a flock, at the same time that each bird is different than the bird next to it," says Jewett. "They're unique but they work together as a group, which says something about the reality of who we are today."
Thanks to a company residency during the initial development phase, Jewett was able to integrate technology from the outset. He used extreme high-definition video to look at the dancers close up or slowed down and see the movement in a different way than it would be viewed from on stage. Video projections and sound became additional "particulars" within the flock.
As he had in the past, Jewett tapped DuBois — whom he considers a "genius" in zeroing in on and aggregating interesting data sets — to come up with possibilities for transforming the data into sound and visuals through highly sophisticated computer programming.
The "music" for the piece relies on an advanced computer animation, famously used to create the bats in Tim Burton's 1989 film, "Batman," that uses a mathematical equation to describe an individual's behavior in a flock. The sounds came from remixes of everyday objects in DuBois' kitchen.
"I turned my kitchen into a Foley stage," says Dubois, referring to a moviemaker's methods for creating sound effects. "I would drop a single penny into a sink, and then drop a bucket of pennies. Then we would come together on the visuals. But Jamie was the conceptual instigator on all of this."
The choreographer says his collaborations with Dubois are "the most effortless I've ever had." At one time, they were also the most unanticipated.
Jewett was "a science guy — pre-med with honors" when a dance class he took to fulfill an arts requirement changed the course of his career, eventually leading to two master's degrees and a doctoral degree in dance technology. When he eventually encountered a problem no one on the faculty could help him with while working on his doctorate, he sent a politely formal letter to DuBois along the lines of "Dear Dr. DuBois, I would be most grateful and appreciative if you would consider meeting with me...".
"Have you met Luke? His response was, 'Oh yeah, that would be cool, let's hang,'" Jewett recalls, laughing. "So that's what we do.
"I've collaborated with lots of people and many times, you spend a lot of time talking about how you'll collaborate. Luke and I don't, we just make stuff. We get together, sample all night, watch movies and sing. It's really fun and slightly irreverent."
For their first collaboration in 2004, they had to tie together three laptops in order to create a computer powerful enough to run what they envisioned. Technological advances now mean one computer can handle the video, music and projections for a single performance, though that doesn't mean that DuBois, who handles the computer during shows, isn't still "sometimes pulling his hair out," says Jewett.
The only time he himself finds technology alienating is when the work finally reaches the performance stage, he says.
"The work in the studio, with the dancers, with Luke, is very rich, but I have a hard time with my work being performed on stage because I have nothing to do," Jewett says. "Your role as a visionary and as a choreographer at that point is completely irrelevant."
Even with today's technological sophistication and the success he and DuBois have had in synthesizing all the elements, Jewett says his primary focus is still on the artistic.
"I'm not interested in technology for technology's sake, or for the gee whiz or wow factor," he says. "Ultimately, I'm pretty old fashioned and I'm still interested in making things that are beautiful and that move people. But I find the way I use technology is an important part of that poetic. It's not alienating because it's not pushing you away, it's drawing you in."
'PARTICULAR' Lostwax Multimedia Dance, part of The Ringling's NowHERE New Stages performance series. 7:30 p.m. Feb. 6-8 at the Historic Asolo Theatre, 5401 Bay Shore Road. $25-$30. 359-5700; www.ringling.org/nowher