“Possibilising performance through interactive telematic technology: Mental Dance” presented by Brown and Lim
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Mental, Hallucinatory and Predictions
Presentation Title:
- Possibilising performance through interactive telematic technology: Mental Dance
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Mental Dance engages audiences in modes of performance that call attention to multiplicitous dimensions of the present. As an interactive improvised dance-sound-tech event, we invite perceiving attention to the mutable present as always already shaped by perception, prior experience, cognition and corporeal change. Neuroscientific research underscores our approach to a digital interface that proposes new relations between audience and performer as a result of repeated COVID-19 lockdowns. Using MediaPipe pose estimation technology to track dancers’ movements from webcam feeds, we directed telematic rehearsals and performance of the work on Zoom where dancers in their home environments sculpt and respond to sound in real- time. Constraints such as forced isolation, lack of access to technology and space to move, were embraced to create a new type of collaborative performance where the screen becomes the stage and the interface between movement and sound. This workflow can be used to enable interactive telematic performance where collaborators are unable to be in the same physical space with no specialist hardware requirements.
