“Somatechnical Nature | Virtual River” presented by Birringer
Symposium:
- ISEA2022: 27th International Symposium on Electronic Art
-
More presentations from ISEA2022:
Session Title:
- Scale and the Poilitical of Other Living Systems
Presentation Title:
- Somatechnical Nature | Virtual River
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
This artist talk presents excerpts from two film projects exploring movement and challenges to movement, raising questions about re-embodiment and experiential dimensions of propriopecption in inter-pandemic society under a global climate crisis. The primary focus is on techno-choreography (using prosthetic devices and the Oculus Quest2 VR headset) and the somatechnical predicaments in the face of disturbance-based ecologies and blasted landscapes. A second concern is the exploration of new expressive techniques for ageing and differently-abled bodies. Electric Dance, or How to Talk with Birds and How Much of These Hills is Gold portray a series of outdoor performances during the COVID-19 lockdown periods: ‘compostitions,’ to use Donna Haraway’s term, which involve intimate individual and collective probings and drawings-to-perform enacted outdoors in a valley. The films evoke a series of climbs (up electrical power masts and hills) and submergences into river flow, which seek to combine body weather techniques (derived from Japanese butoh dance) with digital processing and speculative drawing in 3D virtual environment. The site-specific performances are creative responses as well as social choreographies in an era of climate crisis.
