The future of 3D nō experience?

Canon and IBM Japan will join forces to promote performing arts using volumetric video technology, which I understand as being a form of 3D video filming which will allow to freely move the point of view around the stage. Captured images are digitally processed so that they can be modified adding CGI. The Iemoto of the Hōshō school, Hōshō Kazufusa, is collaborating with this project – you can see samples of his performance of Aoinoue on the Volumetric x Noh Website.

4 thoughts on “The future of 3D nō experience?

  1. Thank you for this. It is kind of interesting, but I can’t help thinking that it is part of an attempt to notate and codify a performing tradition so that its transmission is no longer reliant on real living, sweating, trembling human beings.

    Many aspects of the performing traditions in China, particularly after the cultural revolution, came to rely heavily on films and videos when the masters has died or been killed.

    1. Thank you for your comment. In the case of nō, I think that technological advancements have always been incorporated in art production/transmission. Plays were passed on orally before they started being written down in the 14th century. From the 17th century print technology helped the diffusion of nō to the commoners. More recently, photography and film are an integral part of the promotion of nō. I think that, in the end, the useful will stay, but the gimmicky will disappear.

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