Dancing with myself: the interactive visual canon platform

The canon is a composition pattern with a long history and many forms. The concept of the canon has also been applied to experimental film making and on Japanese television. We describe our Interactive Visual Canon Platform (IVCP) that enables creators of visual canons to design their movements through rapid cycles of performance and evaluation. The IVCP system provides real time support for the actors; they can see the canon resulting from their movements while they are still performing. We describe some possible approaches to a solution, and reasons for choosing the approach that we have implemented. The hardware has reached a stable state, but we are still optimizing the visual processing of the system. A first user test is planned to provide us with information for improving the system.