Trade shows… the heaven and hell of industry. The exhibition space provides a welcome opportunity for a company to meet its customers, but – even taking into account today’s modern spaces – the environment is rarely the perfect setting in which to demonstrate its wares. Particularly if your company excels in real-time video solutions that are more at home in arenas and stadiums. This was the challenge faced by the Green Hippo team and its show partner Notch, the game-changing real-time visual creation tool that keeps up with your ideas. A specially commissioned contemporary dance piece, performed within the confines of the stand and its 4m sq. metres dance floor was the team’s ingenious response.
In advance of the show, the Green Hippo team worked with Tavaziva Dance, led by its Artistic Director, Bawren Tavaziva. The aim here was to deliver a succinct – no more than two minutes – yet impactful dance piece; one which instantly demonstrated the real-time rendering and visualisation possibilities when you work with Green Hippo technology. Harnessing the impressive powers of Notch and Noitom motion capture technologies, the Hippotizer Media Server enabled the creative team to create a flowing example of Hippotizer’s excellence with real-time media playback and 3D projection mapping.
Above: Green Hippo and Notch commissioned a dance piece with Tavaziva dance company at Prolight+Sound 2018
Green Hippo debuted the performance at Prolight+Sound 2018 – to those who may not know, this is a celebrated trade show, but it still comes with the typical exhibition space challenges of limited space and an overly brightly lit environment. Wearing a Noitom Perception Neuron prosumer wireless system, Bawren Tavaziva performed the two-minute piece, with the Hippotizer Media Server receiving his moves in real-time. This is one of the beauties of Green Hippo tech – humans are, well, human and no performance is 100% identical, but Hippotizer, integrated with Notch, works in real-time, adjusting to the performer’s timing, ensuring that the accompanying animation stays in sync.
This real-time ability was also key to the success before even Bawren stepped deftly on stage. With Green Hippo technology occupying the role of a ‘technological creative director’, its real-time features enabled the artistic team to adapt the performance, there and then, on the fly. The potential time saved here is of huge importance – not only artists can work ‘in the moment’, but demands on rehearsal time, and therefore project costs, can be greatly reduced.
“Working with some relatively straightforward technologies, and of course a highly talented dancer, we created a performance which was undoubtedly greater than the sum of its parts,”said Ryan Brown, product manager at Green Hippo, and a key member of the performance’s creative team. “And this is precisely what Green Hippo and Hippotizer does so very well. Our products bring together specialists from many disciplines, welcoming them in its technologically agnostic approach, enabling them to play nice with each other, and ultimately delivering cutting-edge, impactful end results. And Hippotizer is not only in real-time, but once you’ve spent a little quality time with our training team, it’s also really easy.”
The outcome of Bawren, Ryan, and the entire creative team’s efforts was a unique performance; one that captured imaginations as well as crowds. When it comes down to it, trade shows are about starting conversations, and the Green Hippo two-minute dance piece was a starter for (way more than) ten.