Performance

The performance of Flog (a combination of flux and blog), by Luc Dall’Armellina, emphasizes our alienation due to the speed of televisual or RSS news flux.

(Source: Serge Bouchardon, "Digital Literature in France")

"Ominous (OMN) is a sculpture of incarnated sound. The piece was commissioned on occasion of the finals of the 5th Live Electronic Music Project Competition, organized by the European Conference of Promoters of New Music (ECPNM).
The performance embodies, before the audience, the metaphor of an invisible and unknown object enclosed in my hands. This is made of malleable sonic matter. Similarly to a mime, I model the object in the empty space by means of whole-body gestures. By using my visceral, new musical instrument “Xth Sense”, the bioacoustic sound produced by the contractions of my muscle tissues is amplified, digitally processed, and played back through nine loudspeakers. The natural sound of my muscles and its virtual counterpart blend together into an unstable sonic object. This oscillates between a state of high density and one of violent release. As the listeners imagine the object’s shape by following my gesture, the sonic stimuli induce a perceptual coupling. The listeners see through sound the sculpture which their sight cannot perceive.

OMN is an hommage to artist Alberto Giacometti. The piece is an interpretation of a recurrent topic in his work, that of “a constant irrational search and movement towards an unknown object” (Saint Louis Art Museum, 1967). This theme is embodied in the threatening, bronze-casted sculpture Hands Holding the Void, which is the inspiration for this performance. Also known as The Invisible Object (1934-1935), the sculpture consists of a human-like figure combining natural and abstract traits, which seems to hold an invisible object. Its body rests in an unstable position and its suffering gaze seems about to explode in a loud cry."

Source: Artist project page

The collaborative project between Anarchy Dance Theatre and Ultra Combos focused on building up a new viewer centered performance venue. In this space all movements including the dancers’ and audience’s can be detected and interact with each other through visual effect. The audience is not merely watching the show but actively participating in it.

(Source: Collective's project page)

"The basic idea of the project is built upon the consideration of creating a moving sculpture from the recorded motion data of a real person. For our work we asked a dancer to visualize a musical piece (Kreukeltape by Machinenfabriek) as closely as possible by movements of her body. She was recorded by three depth cameras (Kinect), in which the intersection of the images was later put together to a three-dimensional volume (3d point cloud), so we were able to use the collected data throughout the further process. The three-dimensional image allowed us a completely free handling of the digital camera, without limitations of the perspective. The camera also reacts to the sound and supports the physical imitation of the musical piece by the performer. She moves to a noise field, where a simple modification of the random seed can consistently create new versions of the video, each offering a different composition of the recorded performance. The multi-dimensionality of the sound sculpture is already contained in every movement of the dancer, as the camera footage allows any imaginable perspective." Text: Sandra Moskova Source: Artist webpage

"A six-legged, pneumatically powered walking machine has been constructed for the body. The locomotor, with either ripple or tripod gait, moves fowards, backwards, sideways and turns on the spot. It can also squat and lift by splaying or contracting its legs.

The body is positioned on a turn-table, enabling it to rotate about its axis. It has an exoskeleton on its upper body and arms. The left arm is an extended arm with pneumatic manipulator having 11 degrees-of- freedom. It is human-like in form but with additional functions. The fingers open and close , becoming multiple grippers. There is individual flexion of the fingers, with thumb and wrist rotation. The body actuates the walking machine by moving its arms. Different gestures make different motions- a translation of limb to leg motions. The body's arms guide the choreography of the locomotor's movements and thus compose the cacophony of pneumatic and mechanical and sensor modulated sounds."

(Source: Artist webpage)

This performance of Piringer’s video poem “Broe Sell” extends the Lettrist dynamics occurring on screen onto the stage and the dancers. There are two significant props: a white sheet on the ground that may represent a page or screen surface, and a constant trickle of little crumpled pieces of paper falling on a spotlit space in the front of the stage. The dancers act like letters— or better said, letters placed in Piringer’s hand, which leads them to behave much differently from what we’re used to seeing on page or screen. In synch with the music and displayed video poem, the letter-dancers cluster and disperse, articulate their joints, collapse, rise again, and gaze time and again at the paper trickle.

Choreography: Kristina Merrill
Poetry: Joerg Piringer (“Broe Sell”)
Dancers: Jenny Alperin, Andrea Fitzpatrick, Kara Hodges, Stephanie Ohman, Lexi Julian

(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)

This piece is performed to the beat of a metronome playing at 100 BPM (beats per minute), the fast end of the andante tempo. That allows for Hatcher to read his poem “Control Relay Logic” one word at a time, adjusting the duration of each word to fit the space between beats, as is customary in rap music. This externalized rhythm for the poem makes the spoken word strange, but also musical, allowing Hatcher to repeat words beyond what he might pull off with a traditional reading. The dancers’ movements are also timed to that beat, making their synchronized movements somewhat mechanical. Their repetitive motions are also appropriate in this context, making them seem like logic gates, electronic switches, parts of a machine that is processing information in an orderly fashion.

“Signal Box”
Choreography: Hayley Sunshine
Poetry: Ian Hatcher (“Control Relay Logic”)
Dancers: Kara Hodges, Brianna Jahn, Ashlee Lodico, Marika Matsuzak, Megan Starnes

(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)

This nonverbal piece juxtaposes a single dancer with Hans Richter’s 1921 Dada film. In this film white, black, and grey rectangles move in and out of the screen, shrinking, growing, and changing shapes. The dancer’s movement cast shadows upon this surface as she spins, poses, reaches out with her arms and legs in ways that make me wonder whether she is interpreting letters upon this stage and screen. Is she writing on these spaces? If so, her letters are not the static things we’re used to inscribing on a page or word processor. These are letters that feel at home on a time-based medium, such as the stage and this film by Richter. And in good Dada tradition, they are freed from meaning.

Choreography: Shelley Hain
Film: Hans Richter (1921)
Music: Sue Harshe
Dancer: Danielle Delong

(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)

This powerfully expressive nonverbal poem builds on the title, with the dancers’ actions and movements in front of a video produced by Jhave. The first meaning of bindings is clear as the dancers come on stage boung by strips of fabric or are bound by other dancers. This act is portrayed in different ways— forcefully, gently, voluntarily, but never cruelly— yet the soft materials seem very effective in handicapping the dancers, who continue to dance oddly, as if exploring their new bodily conditions. As the piece progresses they are all freed, yet this seems to bring no solace to their bodies, which continue moving awkwardly.

Choreography: Brianna Jahn
Poetry: Jhave
Dancers: Kate Kenyon, Ashley Peters, Holli Simme, Samantha Will

(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)