“Hekateris Dance” presented by Gould

Hekateris Dance is an Augmented Reality installation, converging past and present, to envisage a distant future, threatened by the extinction of many species on the Earth which has been impacted by climate change. Hekateris Dance acts as a provocation to imagine what we are becoming in a posthuman world beyond anthropocentrism where, as Rosi Braidotti asserts, we are in a state of becoming through the convergence of technology and organic matter in a “zoe/geo/techno assemblage”. This aligns with Donna Haraway’s proposition that we need to work in collaboration with other non-human beings to survive on a damaged planet. On entering the gallery, the visitor scans a QR code revealing a life-sized three-dimensional hybrid being which is transported into the exhibition space using Augmented Reality (AR) and is viewable through a mobile phone. The avatar invites participation in the ritual of dance, using contemporary movements but in homage to the ancient Greek dance of the Hekateris, as a celebration of the natural world. This practice-based research project explores how AR can be utilised through playful interaction and storytelling as a discursive tool to prompt audiences to take action in order to be part of the change in achieving net zero.