Prosthetic Phantoms, Automated, Involuntary & Avatar Choreography

My performances have always been concerned with the dynamics of body and machine movement and how to choreograph and counterpoint them. In addition there has been a fascination with computer animation and motion capture. Alternate interfaces are necessary to coordinate the physiological, the mechanic and the virtual. We usually associate action with intention. In the virtual, Internet and robot performances the body has experienced the involuntary, the alien and automated motion- action without intention and action initiated remotely. The body becomes a more varied and extended system of awareness and operation, a more complex structure of peripheral and prosthetic and phantom augmentation. Phantom not as in phantasmagoric, but as in phantom limb. Phantom effects not the result of any bodily loss but rather through addition of new circuitry. In this way, the phantom is another way of speaking of the virtual. More intimate and varied interfaces for the body have to be constructed. The precision, power and speed of technology has been incorporated whilst body movements are translated into machine motions. Its position/orientation is sensed not only in the local space that it occupies but also in the electronic space that it operates. The body experiences more external inputs and uses internal signals as controls.