Compositions for Bit, featuring Alpha 4 Tron by Suzanne Thorpe

Compositions for Bit is a collaborative project concieved by new media artist Katherine Behar. As a tribute to the movie Tron, she designed an immersive environment, that brought together giant computer "bits," lasers, video mixes, sound scores, and other relics of arcade culture.

The performance, entitled "Compositions for Bit", featured one of the smallest characters in Tron: Bit, the animated polyhedron who becomes Jeff Bridges' sidekick on his video game adventure. In the performance three larger than life sculptures of Bit each held a dancer wearing interactive video game sensor technology. As the Bits and their dancers moved, they affect sound and video, making it possible to see and hear changes generated. Suzanne Thorpe, Silvia Ruzanka, and Shelley Burgon each created original sound scores, which the Bits performed live during this three-part interactive presentation, with the movement of the dancers effecting the implementation of the scores via Wii controllers strapped to their bodies. Simultaneously, video of the dancers' movements were projected onto overhanging screens and mixed with arcade images. The audience was free to roam the performance space and even gaze into the Bit shapes to watch the dancers, or push the shapes around.

This documentation features Alpha 4 Tron, by Suzanne Thorpe, and contains a bit of background about the work.