Richard Clar, Tetsuro Fukuhara – New Butoh Space Dance: Interstellar Message Composition – 2004

The basis for the concept put forth in this paper—creating an interstellar message using art and technology—was presented at the first workshop, The Art and Science of Interstellar Message Construction (IMC), organized by the SETI Institute of Mountain View, California, held in Paris, in March 2002. Two artists, one from an Eastern culture and one from a Western culture–with a shared belief in universality common in art–have developed a modality for constructing a message directed towards an Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI). Collaborating on New Butoh Space Dance – Interstellar Message Composition (NBSD-IMC), New Butoh Sensei, Tetsuro Fukuhara, and interdisciplinary artist, Richard Clar, present a novel approach to Interstellar Message Composition utilizing art and technology. Combining the multi-cultural dimensions of music and dance with the use of two non-traditional technologies, Stereolithography and Motion Capture, it will be demonstrated how the behavioral and emotional state of the sender of the message might be revealed. A detailed account describing the art, technology, and philosophy of NBSD-IMC is presented in a chapter by Richard Clar in a forthcoming book, Between Worlds: The Art and Science of Interstellar Message Composition (The MIT Press), to be released in 2005 [1].

Without relying on language or logic, music and dance can communicate a powerful message. This aspect of music—the ability to cross cultural divides—makes it appealing for use in an IMC. As stated by Clar (2003) in press [2], “An Interstellar Message using art designed for ETI, may have content reflecting multi-cultural dimensions, such as those found in music and dance. . . . Patterns might emerge from our message resembling possible multi-cultural aspects of the ETI’s planet” [3]. Music for NBSD-IMC will be an original electronic score derived in part using data that describes the intended target star and planetary system and data derived or inspired by the dance/performance site location. Currently, there are 110 planetary systems that have been detected since 1996 [4]. As further proposed by Clar, using dance and music together in an IMC “…could illustrate how a person responds to a particular piece of music through movement, thus demonstrating a physical response to an emotional stimulus” [5]. Vakoch (2000) suggests that time as a fourth dimension in the dance movement may provide additional information for an IMC [6].

Dance and Design

Tetsuro Fukuhara, a Japanese Butoh Dancer, and Director of Space Dance, describes Japanese Butoh [7] as “a wonderful dance art to develop the human body into a new body, one that can express the beauty of current times.”

Japanese Butoh is alive today as one of the major art forms in the world cultural markets and has a general value not only from the perspective of theater arts, but also as a design form that can be used in daily life. In 2004, Tetsuro Fukuhara began a Feasibility Study in Tokyo with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) [8] for various utilizations of the Japanese Experimental Module (JEM) [9] at the International Space Station (ISS). In this Feasibility Study, Dance and Design are included in the activities planning for the JEM as part of the theme in NBSD-IMC.

Space Dance seeks to construct a new relationship between the body and the technology that bridges Dance, Architecture, Information, and Design. Space Dance is a new dance that creates an appearance of the relationship of the unity between the body, space, and objects. It is not uncommon for people to forget the unity of these three elements in their daily life. The relationship of this unity exists as a mass-like invisible “fluid body.” Questions are: How can we get the sensation of this unity back? How can we enjoy the sensation of this unity? How can we create new designs by using these sensitive experiences? This is what the Space Dance attempts to do. Tetsuro Fukuhara will make several social designs for this new theater of Space Dance by using new methods of “next human engineering” and “interactive design.” Space Dance is an approach to the design based on the Body. This is one of the unique characteristics of Space Dance.

Space Dance Performances

Space Dance in the Dome Space at Nagi Museum in Okayama, Japan

Tetsuro Fukuhara danced in the dome space created by Shusaku Arakawa [10], a Japanese artist. In this space, everyone regained a very nice feeling; some familiar sensation which they have lost in the modern architectural environments.

Space Dance in the Can Space at Lasalle-SIA in Singapore

The students made “something like a costume,” the theme of which was interaction. If the audience can feel some unknown fresh feeling as a “second body” through these movements, then this workshop has been successful.

Space Dance in the Tube Space at the United Nations in New York, U.S.A. [11]

Tube Space is an affinitive space in which body and space respond one to one. It recovers the intimacy of the body and space that has slowly disappeared since the emergence of the modern world.

Space Dance using Holo Wall System by Junichi Rekimoto, Sony CSL at ICC in Tokyo, Japan [12]

Tetsuro Fukuhara danced using this system. This is a post-Motion Capture System. This interface allows movement to be made freely without any kind of weight. The data of the movement can be stored on computer.

Space Dance using 16 Cameras System by NEC Laboratories at Tokyo Design Center in Tokyo, Japan [13]

Tetsuro Fukuhara danced using this post-Motion Capture System. With this system, everyone can make two things at the same time, and not only store the data of their movements on a computer, but also make several digital images in real-time.

Feasibility Study with JAXA

In addition to science and technology, JAXA is also interested in the cultural aspects of space. Tetsuro Fukuhara’s Feasibility Study with JAXA in Tokyo defines five themes that are listed below.

Theme 1 – Artificial Gravity

Focus on the essence of human beings from the aspect of biology reminds us that humans have always walked upright using two feet. In the non-gravity environments of outer space, everyone loses their own individual characteristic “postures;” therefore, it would be useful to have an artificial gravity [14] for the continuance of daily life, in the space environment.

Theme 2 – Body Supporting System for customizing an artificial gravity

If cultivating plentiful cultures in the universe beyond the cultures on Earth is desired, then using artificial gravity for people is not enough. A Body Supporting System needs to be developed for customizing an artificial gravity in order to develop individual “postures.” Individual “postures” are the womb for creating new cultures.

Theme 3 – Relationship between Body Supporting System and Shimizu Corporation’s Space Hotel

By using the Body Supporting System everyone can customize a free artificial gravity condition for his or her “postures” between zero gravity and one gravity. The Body Supporting System will connect with the common artificial gravity in the Shimizu Corporation’s Space Hotel [15].

Theme 4 – Three Programs for Reappearance, Support, and Development

Three programs are needed for “Reappearance”, “Support,” and “Development” for the Body Supporting System as an intelligent robot. A study has been started by Jun Tani [16], Researcher at the Brain Science Institute, and Osamu Okamoto [17], Researcher of Advanced Space Technology Research Group of JAXA in Japan.

Theme 5 – Space Design, Information Design, and Life Style Design in Outer Space

It is expected that by using the Body Supporting System, humans’ usual activities will be changed on a large scale, so that basically, all designs from Earth should change to Space Design, Information Design, and Life Style Design in Outer Space.

Memory Chair in NBSD-IMC

In NBSD-IMC, Tetsuro Fukuhara will develop the Body Supporting System through these continuous experimental thoughts based on the results from his Feasibility Study with JAXA.

Humans’ Posture is a Parameter of Space

Fukuhara will try to create new postures as a human being in his Space Dance. As many animals’ postures have experienced great changes in their evolution, both in water and on the ground, humans’ posture is a parameter that will change by the change in its environments.

Creation of the Postures

Human beings are facing new unknown changes in their environment, influenced from the outside by the information society and outer space, and from inside of the body by robotics and genetic engineering. So the creation of new postures should be sought to adjust to these significant changes.

First Human Beings on the Moon

Who invented lung breathing and primary feet, the last fish or the first amphibian? Who evolved a walking style using two feet, the last monkey or the first human? In the history of biology, they all used their special techniques against their bodies for their existence. In this sense, what kind of inspiration did those humans get who first experienced walking on the Moon at one-sixth of Earth’s gravity?

Body Supporting System

Humans have changed their common recognition about postures by walking on the moon and by studying the effects of gravity. If desired, the usual condition of gravity can be changed using an artificial gravity. In this concern, Fukuhara has taken notice of the fact that the postures will always be born with the relationship of the condition of the space. In addition, he will make the Body Supporting System for customizing the artificial gravity, and will express it as a Memory Chair on the computer.

Function of Body Supporting System

Several functions for the Body Supporting System are needed. Firstly, the System must be available to wear like a costume. Secondly, the Body Supporting System must support its wearer beyond its innate ability, corresponding to the situation, and changing form emergently like unit machines, and functioning as tools, furniture, or supportive devices by transforming itself into a transformable chair, artificial legs, or a transformable cane.

Intelligent Robot

At this level, Fukuhara considers the Body Supporting System as an early stage of an intelligent robot that grows from its original form emergently in response to his usage, then shapes various “postures” corresponding to his desires. The robot will not have enough intelligence at the beginning, but through its daily familiar relationship with Fukuhara, it will gain more intelligence.

Memory Chair

Why express the Body Supporting System as a Memory Chair on the computer? Its results can be seen as the interaction of information. The concept of Memory Chair is to express the evidence of time left behind in the object. The evidence is accomplished by leaving information with both the body and the object. By using the computer for verification of the interaction, Memory Chair proves that the evidence is not illusionary. Thereby, memory in terms of Memory Chair is an accumulation of evidential time that is left in the object. It can be expressed metaphorically as “the chair remembers the body.”

Enhancement of Body Reality

By using the Memory Chair, the turning point of the body environment and the information environment will be experienced. The individual body reality will be enhanced by a continuous effort in creating the information. More so, if the new network that updates the information in a sharpened sense can be constructed, people’s living and information life can be developed creatively.

Creative Network Environment

The Memory Chair is a creation and a circulation of information that responds to individual body circumstance and its desires. It will increase the individual body reality boundlessly. It will dilate human attention both inwardly and outwardly and change the passive attitude toward information.

Unification of Information and Body

Space Dance is aiming to increase the body reality. United by constructing a creative network environment, this type of new unification of information and the body is the answer for the formation of the basis of life design in the twenty-first century.

Tetsuro Fukuhara states: “In the current level of developing an intelligent robot, the expectation for the Body Supporting System will not be fulfilled soon as a complete system. However, even if it were a very primitive system, it would be wonderful if I can realize one movement which conceives some intelligence with the Body Supporting System. Even if it is a miniature, but real system, I can see the actual scene of its time when one intelligence will be born before my own eyes in my daily life. Then I can expect a new relationship between human beings and objects, which didn’t exist before on Earth.

“In one plan, I would stay at the International Space Station, or the Space Hotel, or a base camp on the Moon with the Body Supporting System. In another plan, I will stay on Earth and send the Body Supporting System as my robot, as my other self, out into the universe.”

In any case, in NBSD-IMC, Fukuhara further states:

by using these informational relationships [as my new partner] I will try to make a new way to pass through [my body] like one unknown sensual tunnel for human beings. I am a Space Dancer, so I would express this interesting new trip as a continuous kinetic sensation…For example…the movie Contact is a very nice film. The heroine met with her lost father on some intelligent star in her brain. Through my Space Dance, I think I will be able to express this feeling as a real feeling in our space [18].

Eadweard Muybridge and Leland Stanford explored the idea of capturing motion in the late 1800s. Stanford was a governor of California and also bred racehorses. The question arose as to whether there was a point during a horse’s gallop when all four hooves were off the ground. Stanford enlisted the services of Eadweard Muybridge, an English photographer who was living in California, in an attempt to answer this question. Muybridge used multiple cameras synchronized to the horse’s movement to determine that in fact all four of the horse’s hooves did leave the ground at one point during a gallop [19]. The first series of Muybridge’s motion photographs was published in The Horse in Motion in 1878 [20].

Currently, there are a number of different types of motion capture systems in use. For NBSD-IMC, optical motion capture is best suited for the application, as it offers an unrestricted movement for the performer not found in the other types of motion capture systems. Real-time capture of human motion is possible with some optical motion-capture systems, such as Motion Analysis Corporation’s Eagle System [21]. With the Eagle System, a series of small reflective markers are attached to strategic points on the subject’s body. Sixteen to twenty-four Charged Couple Device (CCD) digital cameras placed around the motion-capture studio record the subject’s X, Y, and Z movements through three-dimensional space. Vakoch (1999) has proposed transmitting an IMC “akin to an ‘interstellar ballet’ using kinesiological principles to describe human movement as quantifiable vectors in Euclidean space, or alternatively, as basic gestures imbued with cultural significance” [22]. Optical motion capture will be used to record the movement data of Tetsuro Fukuhara while he performs to the music of NBSD-IMC.

Among the SETI community, a notion exists that whatever interstellar message we might send would more than likely be ambiguous to the receiver, or at best, might take many years to decipher. Prompted by this belief, the authors thought of a means to convey information in a message that would be three-dimensional and unambiguous.

Stereolithography, a Rapid Prototyping process, provides a solution. Developed in the early 1980’s and used in the fields of Aerospace and Medicine, Stereolithography offers the capability to produce three-dimensional prototypes without any tooling or expensive time consuming set-ups. In the Stereolithography process, 0.1mm-thick slice files are created by solidly piling one layer at a time in sequence, starting with the first file at the bottom of the object to be produced. Upon completion of the Stereolithography process, which may take eight to twelve hours, a highly accurate 3-D model is obtained. Modeling by this process is not limited solely to the surface of the structure, but includes all complex interior spaces as well. STL Slice Files, the software used for Stereolithography, takes data describing a three-dimensional object—either from a CAD file, or in the case of medical imaging, a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), a Computed Axial Tomography (CAT), or a Computed Tomography (CT) file—and slices it horizontally into 0.1mm- thick sections.

An MRI or CAT scan of Tetsuro Fukuhara’s skeleton, converted into STL slice files, will be transmitted as part of the NBSD-IMC. This will allow the recipient of NBSD-IMC to construct a highly accurate, full-scale model of Tetsuro Fukuhara’s skeleton. Motion capture marker points will be indicated on the skeleton.

Not unlike the discovery on Earth of ancient skeletal remains by a Paleontologist or an Archaeologist, the NBSD-IMC skeleton would reveal upon examination a good deal of information, about the sender of the message; for example, cranial capacity, size and placement of sensory organs, teeth, (which would convey information about our diet), and mobility patterns. In addition, a study of the skeletal joints would reveal the range of motion of each joint and would provide useful information when comparing the motion capture data of each joint during NBSD-IMC and the actual limits of the range of motion of each joint.

The ETI recipient of NBSD-IMC would be faced with an interesting challenge in attempting to interpret the data from the music in relation to the Motion Capture and the dancer’s skeleton derived from the STL slice files.

Some portions of NBSD-IMC would be ambiguous, while other portions would be unambiguous, such as the STL slice file skeleton. It is the contention of the authors that the ambiguous portion of the IMC would illicit sufficient interest from the ETI recipient to accept the challenge to decipher the IMC.

Art, and the innovative use of non-traditional technologies, may offer a viable interdisciplinary approach to interstellar message composition. Motion Capture and Stereolithography (as used in NBSD-IMC), combined with music and dance, are two technologies highly suited for this purpose, each having the capacity to reveal to an ETI receiver intriguing information about who we are.

[1] R. Clar, “Ambiguity, Absence, and the Process of Interstellar Art,” in Between Worlds: The Art and Science of Interstellar Message Composition, D. Vakoch, Ed., Cambridge: The MIT Press, in press.
[2] Clar [1] in press.

[3] Clar [1] in press.

[4] California & Carnegie Planet Search, 110 planets are known outside our Solar System (Sept. 2003), retrieved May 1, 2004, from http://exoplanets.org/

[5] Clar [1] in press.

[6] D. Vakoch, “The Conventionality of Pictorial Representation in Interstellar Messages,” in Acta Astronautica, vol. 46, no. 10-12, Elsevier Science Ltd., p.735, 2000.

[7] Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno created Japanese Butoh 35 years ago in Japan.

[8] JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)

[9] JEM (Japanese Experimental Module in the International Space Station) will be built up around 2010 as a manned establishment. JAXA seeks not only scientific experimental works, but also various utilizations from the economy, business, education, and culture for daily life.

[10] Arakawa & Madeline Gins, ”Architectural Experiments”, Tokyo: The Mainichi Newspapers, 1995.

[11] An official comment from Yulya Vanetik, Coordinator, the United Nations, New York: « Thank you for a beautiful performance that you presented at the United Nations in 2001. Space Dance was a fascinating collaboration of Japanese Butoh dance, architectural design and media technology. »

[12] Junichi Rekimoto, Director of Interaction Laboratory of Sony Computer Science Laboratory (CSL).

[13] Toshio Kamei, Assistant Manager of Multimedia Signal Processing, made the 16 Cameras System at NEC Laboratories 2001.

[14] T. W. Hall “The Architecture of Artificial Gravity, Mathematical Musings on Designing for Life and Motion in a Centripetally Accelerated Environment.” Space Manufacturing & Energy and Materials from Space, SSI Proceedings, p.177-186, 1991.

[15] Shinji Matsumoto, Life in the Universe, Shimizu Corporation, Space Systems Division, 2002. Shinji Matsumoto is a member of the driving committee of NBSD-IMC.

[16] Jun Tani, “Model-Based Learning for Mobile Robot Navigation from the Dynamical Systems Perspective” Tokyo: Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1998.

[17] An experimental class for researching the intelligent robot has begun with Osamu Okamoto from JAXA.

[18] Clar [1] in press.

[19] Clar [1] in press.

[20] J.D. B. Stillman, The horse in motion as shown by instantaneous photography, with a study on animal mechanics founded on anatomy and the revelations of the camera, in which is demonstrated the theory of quadrupedal locomotion, Boston: J.R. Osgood and Company, 1882.

[21] Motion Analysis Corporation, Eagle Digital System (2004), retrieved May 1, 2004

[22] D. Vakoch, The Aesthetics of Composing Interstellar Messages, paper presented at the 50th International Astronautical Congress, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 1999.

(Editor’s Note) The initial text included several links to online references and a
list of links that are no longer valid and that have been removed in this
republication. Those references can be still visible in the first publication