ideas are arguably the founding ideas of Amercian contemporary dance. From this foundation of spatial underdstanding, students will learn to "animate" the properties of a performance space through movement, media technology, and the basic elements of what makes theatre. Students will build on ways to develop these spacial ideas towards their own ends as a fundamental part of their work in creating a total 3 dimensional multimedia experience.

Students will study concepts such "dynamic construction", where space is defined by the basic elements of 3 dimension space: form, motion, sound, and light.

Theatrical space will be used as a vessel in which the human condition can be placed by using 'mixtures' of non-narrative, and narrative scenario, and multimedia subtexts. These 'mixtures' of approaches to non-narrative and narrative scenario, will be used to explore the most basic elements of theatre, and as a foundation to creating new theatrical experiences.

Students will work with theatre as "an orchestral complex", developing material as elements of larger constructive "complexes" as described by Schlemmer. Space will be studied, and utilized as an "architectonic- spatial organism", where every element and activity exists in a spatially conditioned relationship.

Set design and lighting.

Building on these formal principles of space, (movement, form, colour), students will create staged architectural environments, as a fundamental part of their multimedia work.

Students will build set design (incorporating film as set design), and use lighting in their work. They will develop approaches in using set design and lighting as a way to articulate, and extend spatial, and spatially interactive relationships between media and 3 dimensional environment.

Set design will be approached as a way of extending multimedia out into a 3 dimensional space, and as kind of "interactive scallfolding" between media, liberating it within a 3 dimensional space. The multimedia "play" of students work will come into being at this point, where all media, and theatrical elements are experienced as part of a total 3 dimensional audiovisual experience.

Students will study, and explore the way a stage presents itself for spatial articualtion. This part of the course explores the way set design, in its many forms, can be a fundamental tool in motivating this.

Students will learn to delineate the geometry of space, and to structure,and develop their multimedia language as a 3 dimensional experience.

Narrative, and non-narrative relationships with 3 dimensional space will be used to influence the form their work takes.

Students will build on structural influences of how a space, and content within space can be divided "planimetrically" and "sterometrically". Students will learn to create linear networks of "planimetric" and "stereometric fields", paramount in relationships between action and media.

They will create spatial linear webs between media, which will have decisive influences on the balances between media, action and set design and lighting, using it to develop the intrinsic qualities of their individual approaches to their creative language.

These approaches to space, and set design open up umlimited posiblities into which situations can be placed, or created as time based art. Here, no element of theatrical expression is left as an appendage of a decorative representational theatre. Every element of their work will become part of the 3 dimensional performance experience which will bring space into direct connectivity with all the other media used in their work.

Improvisational Processes

Students will use theatrical and movement improvisation to develop ideas surrounding 3 dimensional connectivity with media. Improvisation will form a thearical basis for a way into developing the staged aspects of the students work. It will be used as a way of 'animating' the 3 dimensional possibilities of their multimedia scripted work, while at the same time investigating the way theatrical improvisation can feedback into the way in which the students use media to communicate an idea, and the way improvsiation and theatre can control, manipulate, and create conditions for multimedia.

Students will learn how to split action between theatre and media. They will progress to manage, and 'sculpt' the way physical 3 dimensional material can respond to the possibilities inherent in their multimedia, and how to develop movement as sub-text within a multimedia scenario.

Costume and Props.

The course explores the transformative role of costume, where the human antinomy can be extended, and character can be reduced to type, altered, transformed, or entranced by the addition of props as applied objects.

Props will be explored as an influence on habitual behaviour, and the physical and psychic structure of the performers, or characters creating the action and reaction between performed elements.

Props and costume will be used to develop scenario, the theatrical situation, or condition and direction of the interrelationships created within the work, and between the characters placed within the staged environment. Gestures and actions can be instinctively developed by the specific nature of a prop, or conditions of the costume, and heightened even further by the conditions of media manipulating the space, or expressed within it.

Dramatic presentation skills learnt:

• Lighting design techniques.

• Set design and fabrication co-ordination.

• Using film as set design and as an integral part of multi media communication.