AIEP Avventure in Elicottero Prodotti

Ariella Vidach & Claudio Prati
© BAK/Gregory Batardon

AIEP Avventure in Elicottero Prodotti

Special Dance Award 2017

AiEP are pioneers in combining dance with digital technologies, and an institution in Ticino. Claudio Prati and Ariella Vidach set up an artists’ collective in Lugano in 1988 and gave it its name, which is almost impossible to memorise and literally means “Helicopter Adventure Products”. The 1980s were an era of multimedia productions, thanks to the advent of video technology and media clips. AiEP arose out of those same interdisciplinary concerns. Its aim was to explore new technologies in contemporary dance. Claudio Prati was born in Bern in 1954 and studied gymnastics and sport at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich followed by sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera and pantomime at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan. Between 1986 and 1988 he lived in New York, where he studied video art and mixed media at New York University and contact improvisation at the Movement Research centre and PS 122. Ariella Vidach was born in Umag, Yugoslavia, in 1956 and danced in New York from 1980 to 1989. Influenced by postmodern dance, Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton and Bill T. Jones, she began producing her own works in 1982. The two sides came together in the Ariella Vidach – AiEP dance company in Milan in 1996. In 2013 they won a UN-sponsored World Summit Award in Colombo, Sri Lanka for the interactive system INaxyz, which was recognised as one of the most innovative products developed for dance.

“EXP” (1996) was one of their first interactive choreographies. Using the Mandala virtual reality system, the dancers interacted by means of two cameras with visual symbols that were projected onto screens. The sound composition devised by Franz Treichler was also created live through interaction with the dancers. To date, some 20 further choreographies exploring communication between human and machine have been created using various motion capture processes and interactive technologies, most recently “VOCset” (2014) and “HABITdata” (2016). The same year also saw “Temporaneo Tempobeat”, in which the MAX software is used like a beatbox to transform voice and sound into an interactive movement experience. AiEP’s work in Ticino and Lombardy doesn’t end there: they also run a studio in Milan, where young people can share in their technological developments, and campaign tirelessly to raise the profile of the performing arts and culture in Ticino politics.

Tiziana Conte, jury member:

“Artists Ariella Vidach and Claudio Prati have been flying their virtual helicopters for over thirty years, soaring across the borders between the arts and interactive media. Since the beginning of their partnership and the foundation of AiEP (Helicopter Adventure Products) the duo have been driven by their pioneering spirit and unwavering enthusiasm. They have spearheaded and participated in experiments at blending dance with the multimedia arts, yet have never underestimated the importance of the dancer’s personality. Their tireless artistic and personal commitment, as both producers and facilitators of culture, has played a key role in developing the performing arts in Italian-speaking Switzerland and Italy.”