Thomas Jefferson was fond of his pantograph (fig. 1). He used it to copy manuscripts as they were being written. Carbon paper and the Xerox have since eclipsed this function, but the pantograph does have its redeeming graces. Bucky Fuller must appreciate how this simple machine takes advantage of the innate weaknesses of the rectangle and converts them into a useful function. One wonders if this arcane instrument can instruct modern minds.

In the light of pantomime, the lesson of pantography becomes clear: imitation. Mr. Jefferson moves his quill up and down, and the automated quill follows every motion. The abstract movement of "writing" has been separated from Tom's immediate space and can be observed for itself. When a motion becomes independent of other bodily gestures, it is on the level of dance which motivates the mime.

Instruments which follow motion exist. Motion picture photography has this quality as does tracking radar. This article describes a new device, the Electronic Pantograph. It uses the eye of a television camera and the brain of a computer to keep track of moving points in space and writes a record of this movement in the abstract language of a computer-choreographer. It can be used to quantize the space of reflected light, and it can do this in real time. Dancers and musicians, artists of the dimension of time, must appreciate the waveform generated by the Electronic Pantograph: position versus time.

In fact, pantomation was first conceived in a music studio. It was seen as a convenient way to notate electronic music. Light pens and "Rand" tablets are also useful in this capacity, but they must be used at the computer site. How inconvenient for the composer who has a brainstorm on a boat in Bavaria (as suggested in the cover illustration) or for some impoverished genius who does not own a computer. As originally designed, the Electronic Pantograph uses a television camera to "read" handwritten musical scores. In this system, waveforms are loaded into digital oscillators and are routed to analogue processors by crosspoints closed according to a hand-drawn matrix chart. The resulting score looks strikingly like classical guitar notation (fig. 2). By December 1976 an actual machine had been developed which could load a hand-drawn waveform into a computer. The temptation to turn this modified camera on a human figure was too great to resist.

2. Pantomation

The first application of pantomation occurred during the production of Outta Space, a pantomime which makes use of video synthesis to simulate gravitationless space. Indeed, there is virtually no gravity in a cathode ray tube, so dancers will understand why a potentially serious development in their act was first used as a source of levity. In one scene, the mime James Snafu plays a magnetic robot who lifts the hapless Zierot by the scruff of his spacesuit. Snafu is not noted for his bulging biceps. The illusion was created by attaching a bright yellow dot to Snafu's hand. The dot was followed by the Electronic Pantograph looking through the eye of a chroma key camera tuned to the dot's particular hue. The derived position in space was used to deflect the image of Zierot as displayed on the video synthesizer. When the dot was hidden from the camera, which the mime could easily do by merely turning his wrist, Zierot was left suspended, as if floating, in the last position marked by the dot (fig. 3).

The sleight of sight which produced the pantomime hand gag can be extended to facilitate other performing arts. For example, the colored dot on the tip of a conductor's baton could be interpreted by a computer to shape the timbre, modulate the amplitude, alter the tempo or direct the balance of an orchestral sound.(fig. 4). To this musical purist, who disdains the frenzied expressions of contemporary conductors and places their gyrations in a category just one level above horse whipping; pantomation could provide a set of visual cues to help in the appreciation of the music while giving the performer better control over it.

The skill of movement which characterizes the conductor has its next nexus in the world of dance, and pantomation could prove extremely valuable in linking this ancient art with the modern media. The conductor may be able to generate music by movement, but the dancer-uses movement to generate more movement. Two dancers working together can create a larger sense of spatial change than the individual dancers working alone. Indeed, unlike mime artists, dancers invariably come in groups. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. With dance in television, the whole should be greater than the sum of the arts.

It has been axiomatic in televising dance that the little screen narrows the scale of the performance. Cutaways to close-ups are essential if the viewer is to witness much rehearsed detail, but this lowers access to the performance as a whole. Such a dilution of intent becomes inevitable when

3. Pantomation

videotaping dance works meant for the stage. Of course, one should be thankful for the historical record afforded by such achievements as Dance in America, but it pains this observer to witness contemporary creative groups such as the Merce Cunningham Dance Company march in front of the camera like circus animals. The dancer ought to have some form of direct physical control over the image while it is being created. This is not to denigrate the abstract communication that makes possible collaborations between dancers and video artists, but rather a call to enhance the abstraction by giving it a visual representation. If the dancers' movement controlled a synthetic space, the link to video might be easier to forge.

For those whose imaginations might request a concrete example, Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase is an excellent reference. This skeletal abstraction shows the parameters of movement in discrete steps (fig. 6). The foresight of this painting has since been underscored by its frequent imitation in photographic studies. Pantomation could imitate this idea at a rate of sixty times a second. Indeed, such related creations as Boccioni's futurist sculpture, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, are within reach of the Electronic Pantograph, because the third dimension can be readily detected by a two camera version of the same device (fig. 5). Additionally, a movement may be magnified or contracted, superimposed or offset to the side, created immediately or replayed from the past. Movements can become visual structures that serve as "sets" for subsequent events; other visual abstractions can replace the dancers' costumes.

These ideas of dance in television are currently being explored by Electronic Body Arts (EBA), the Air Farce Mime Troupe, and the Electronic Music Studio of the University at Albany with equipment support from WMHT TV, Schenectady, N.Y. The projects are guided by Joel Chadabe, Composer-in-Residence at SUNYA, Tom DeWitt, an NEA and AFI fellow; Maude Baum, Phil Edelstein and George Kindler of EBA. A pantomation system is under construction at WMHT TV under a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. A basic demonstration will be made at the NEA sponsored Design in Electronic Art Conference on March 10 at Media Study Inc in Buffalo, N.Y.