IMPRESSION The viewer enters a dark room. In the middle of the room, on the floor, is a large white square, on which a projector that is attached to the ceiling, is projecting an image of a tiny balloon popping up at random places. The balloon rapidly expands, and after it has grown very big, it is replaced by other balloons at other places. When the viewer steps on the floor inside the projection area, the shadow of his steps leaves a trace of bright colors. Every one of these colors is different, and the colors dissolve smoothly into each other. The trace of colors slowly dissolves into blackness, as if it were dying out. While the viewer moves on, every step he takes adds a new tone to a melody of harmonic sounds. As he keeps moving, a complex pattern of music starts to evolve, it is as if he is playing an instrument with his movements. From all sides, sounds of the 'Mukkuri' (an ancient mouth drum from the North of Japan) can be heard. If he stands still, a synthesized voice starts speaking of waves, colors, tones, harmonies, interferences, differences. If he starts to move again, the voice almost unnoticably transforms itself into a singing voice, chanting its lines in sonore melodies. The viewer walks, moves and dances, alternating fast movements with slow movements, low energy with high energy, movement with rest. Every step creates a color and a sound, and as he is weaving more and more complex patterns, the colors become a painting which is changing and moving under his feet, the sounds which are surrounding him become part of the ever changing composition. Suddenly he enters into a different palette of newly created colors, belonging to another part of the spectrum; his movements cause more alterations in the pattern of pitch, timbre and spatial position which modify the singing voice and contribute to the complexity of its sound. Every time he hits an expanding balloon, the character of the music and the palette of colors change in a subtle way, bending the viewer's play into another direction. His energy is transformed into a driving force for the creation of music and colors, he leaves an impression of his energy behind, which is spread as paint made out of light, over the canvas under his feet. His resting slows down all sounds and colors, leaving less sound, less and less color, no composition in the end, only the expanding balloons waiting.

DESCRIPTION An infrared light system is built in a floor to detect any movement of a person walking on the floor. All movements on the floor are registered, and sent as MIDI signals to a Macintosh computer. The musical composition (written with MAX, a composition language by IRCAM) runs real time on the Macintosh computer, using the viewer's movements to determine the current sounds. It sends the movement data further to an SGI workstation were it is used for the real time graphics program (written with Inventor in C++), which uses it to determine the current graphics. This image is projected on the floor by a projector which is attached to the ceiling, and with this, the circle is closed.

DANCE OF THE FIVE ANIMALS Among the well-preserved sacrificial objects excavated in Tomb No 3 at Mawangdui in Changsa, the capital of Hunan Province, there were many medical treatises and special books about daoyin dating back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24), including painted figures of both sexes and different ages on 44 pieces of coloured silk doing various daoyin movements. Some imitated the movements of the tiger, deer, bear, ape and bird, which was later called "wuqinxi", or "five-animal play" (from: Dayan Qigong, by Yang Meijun, Hong Kong 1990).

CREDITS Music composition and programming: Masahiro Miwa, Duesseldorf, Germany. Graphics concept and programming: Akke Wagenaar, Cologne, Germany. Production: Bodo Lensch, Bonner Entwicklungsgesellschaft fuer Comutermmedien e.V., Bonn, Germany. Speech object programming: Masayuki Akamatsu, Kobe, Japan; ComMu (Virtual Computer Music Laboratory). Copyright: Masahiro Miwa & Akke Wagenaar, 1994, Cologne, Germany.

SUPPORT AND SPONSORING The work was supported and sponsored by: Ministry of Culture, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Dutch Foundation for the Arts, Architecture and Design, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany. Silicon Graphics Industries, Cologne, Germany. GIMIK, Initiativ fuer Musik und Informatik, Cologne, Germany. SVV, Nuernberg, Germany.