“The body inverse” presented by Hosale, Macy and James
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Human and Non-Human Bodies: A Dialogue
Presentation Title:
- The body in\verse
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
The body in\verse is an online, interactive performance that combines biophysical sensing, emotive state sonification and visualization, and generative poetry to create the scene. The performance provides a deep dive from the world outside of ourselves, that is dissociated by mediated technology, into the interoceptive abyss of our emotive sea. Audience members are invited to participate in a focussed conversation that becomes the basis for the activity that follows. Questions will be on the rise of a technological culture, and how it has left us wanting, consciously or not, for identification and awareness of “essential rhythm”, that we continue to lose track of now that we live mostly in cities as the aboriginal environment recedes from view. The performance environment provides the ability to control the presentation of stimuli and monitor the physical reaction based on the interpretation of nuanced emotional state, blurring the line between auditory and visual real-time content and physical experience.
A biophysical sensing system measures the emotional affect of the performer, and then uses that data to drive the sound, abstract imagery, and a generative poetry algorithm. Emotional affect of the performer is assessed through arousal and valence measures derived from correlation of the performer’s heart rate and heart rate variability. An algorithm generates poetry using conversations that take place with the audience as source material. The poetry source material is then algorithmically organized according to its sentiment (positive to negative), and mapped to the emotional affect of the performer driven by the emotional affect assessment from the biophysical measures as described above.
