EMPAC (Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center), May 2013
[radical] signs of life is a large-scale multi-media experience employing biotechnology to integrate networked bodies and interactive dance. Directed by Heidi Boisvert and choreographed by Pauline Jennings, the work externalizes the mind’s non-hierarchical distribution of thought through responsive, rule-based choreography and a database of phrases. Music is generated from the dancers’ muscles and blood flow via biophysical sensors that capture sound waves from the performers’ bodies. This data triggers complex neurobiological algorithms to be projected onto multiple screens as 3D imagery. As the audience interacts with the images produced, they enter into a dialogue with the dancers. Conceptually, the piece is an embodied examination of the increasing disparity between the encroachment of bio-data and the quiet discord of bio-memory.
About the Work:
Through responsive dance, [radical] signs of life externalizes the mind’s non-hierarchical distribution of thought. Music is generated from the dancers‘ muscles and blood flow via biophysical sensors that capture sound waves from the performers’ bodies. This data triggers complex neural patterns to be projected onto multiple screens as 3D imagery. As the audience interacts with the images produced, they enter into a dialogue with the dancers.
The performance is one of the first works of this scale using biotechnology to integrate networked bodies and interactive dance. It was conceived and directed by new media artist and game designer Heidi Boisvert in collaboration with an international team of artists, including Pauline Jennings (Choreographer), Doug Van Nort (Sound Designer), Allen Hahn (Set & Lighting Designer), Raven Kwok (Visual Designer), Amy Nielson (Costume Designer) and Marco Donnarumma (Sensor Designer & Developer). The project features the Xth Sense (XS), a biophysical sensor that detects and captures mechanical sound waves produced at the onset of musculature contraction. For [radical] signs of life, a wireless network and stand alone armband was custom developed for the XS by engineer MJ Caselden, and industrial designer, Krystal Persaud at Harvestworks through funds from the Rockerfeller Foundation’s New York City Cultural Innovation Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The choreography for the hour-long performance is composed in real-time by five dancers from a shared movement database in accordance with pre-determined rules. Outfitted with two wireless sensors each, the dancers–Jennifer Mellor, Ellen Smith Ahern, Hanna Satterlee, Avi Waring and Willow Wonder–create patterns that dissolve from autonomous polyrhythms to intersecting lines as they slip through generative video and light. Van Nort also improvises original multi-channel electroacoustic music live with new interactive sound instruments based on the XS technology to sculpt a dense web of complex texture and emotion around the audience.
[radical] signs of life premiered at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in May 2013 through generous support from the Arts Department at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute along with iEAR Studios. Rehearsal Space has been granted through an Artist Residency at the Contemporary Dance & Fitness Center in Montpelier, VT.
About the Choreography:
The dance performance evolved through three levels of self-organizing systems choreographically, which were mirrored visually and sonically.
1. Conway: In the first game level, dancers can be seen participating in an adaptation of Conway’s Game of Life, which dictates survival between states of loneliness and starvation. As individual movement triggers fellow dancers to move throughout the space, dancers collide within territories marked by tape. These collisions may result in the starvation of fellow dancers and the game level ends when one dancer survives.
2. Hebb: Each dancer begins level 2 with an individual goal and trajectory through the space. As dancers begin to meet fellow dancers along their trajectories, unions begin to form. As these bonds strengthen, dancers begin navigating their trajectories as partners and eventual as a group. To win the level, a community of 5 dancers must be formed.
3. Markov: The dancers begin this last level building upon the cohesion developed during level two, but with the challenge of not being permitted to travel outside of their level 1 territories. The group explores dynamics of leadership until a clear director temporarily emerges, resulting in the degradation back into the power struggles of Level 1.