DIGITAL HEAVEN
interactive dance performance
DIGITAL HEAVEN, 2022
Concept, visuals, programming: Cristina Bodnarescu
Dance, choreography: Anamaria Guguian
Sound design: Ethics of Joy (Cristina Bodnarescu, George Urse)
Synopsis:
A human body is transferred into the digital realm through body scanning. At first, the newly born digital double learns to move and act from her analogue body, but it later outgrows her.
Short Description:
Emphasising a certain metamorphosis between the visceral and the virtual bodies, the organic and the artificial, “Digital Heaven” explores the dialogue between the dancer and her digital double at the intersection and colliding of the two worlds. Adopting an aesthetic of bodily disappearance, in “Digital Heaven” the internal contradictions of identity are not resolved, but are made manifest.
Following a predetermined narrative path, but leaving space for human-computer improvisation, the choreographic performance raises questions regarding notions of body surface and double, by using interactive technologies such as projection mapping and gesture recognition.
Digital Heaven is an interactive dance performance which uses
- embodied interaction
- dynamic projection mapping on the performer’s body
- body interaction with visual systems
- gesture recognition to trigger audio-visual cues
- generative visuals made in TouchDesigner
- a Kinect motion sensor
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Long Description:
Digital Heaven is a 12-15 minutes choreographic performance in 3 scenes with real-time interactive visuals, projection mapping, and gesturally triggered cues which uses a Kinect motion sensor to track and transform the performer’s silhouette and movements on stage.
I have used motion capture technology to virtually replicate the performer’s body, creating a space for interaction between the physical presence of the dancer and its virtual representation (her digital double). The performer is only reproduced in shadow form, either to encourage her to make performative movements or to enable interaction with graphically generated images.
Through projection mapping, the performer’s body is transposed through a series of becomings, allowing her body to be scanned, replicated, altered and expanded. What is more, the visualisation of the digital double is projected back into the physical space of the performance, generating new forms of interaction and creating a blended environment of real and virtual spaces.
Matthew Causey states that “the mediated screens in live performance are both the opaque border of the representable object, [...] and the site wherein and upon which the subject places its phantasmic projections, while seeing itself see itself.” This double gaze implied by Causey is integrated in our work: the performer is dancing with her non-human other, acknowledging her (at times) mirroring silhouette, but also “apprehending her own phantasmatic projection on the representational screen” (Causey).
While theatrically effective, the doubling allows for a perceptual difference, which can open up a visual and ontological dialogue between the body of the performer and her representation on the screen.
The motion sensor’s unpredictability could lead to glitches in reading the position of the dancer further emphasising the contribution of the machine to the improvisational state of the work.
About the artists:
Cristina Bodnărescu is an artist who integrates new technologies in visual and performative arts, being preoccupied with the body-nature-technology relationship in a posthuman research framework. Her recent projects develop her interests for machine learning, AI, interactivity systems and the technologically mediated human body. She also creates experimental ambient music as part of the duo Ethics Of Joy.
Her personal and collaborative new media works were exhibited at Ars Electronica, Fête des Lumières Lyon, RADAR, Simultan, ALC VideoArt, Amural, Clujotronic.
Anamaria Guguian is an independent artist, facilitator of therapeutic dance workshops, somatic coach and founder of the I Dance You project.
In her artistic explorations she researches the fine line between dance as a performative art and dance as a therapeutic tool transforming this demarcation into a fluid practice where dance becomes for both spectators and dancers a therapeutic art that has the ability to soothe, support and open new perspectives. Nature is the sacred space and the source of inspiration for most of the processes she initiates.
Since 2018, she has choreographed several community dance performances: What keeps us together (2017), Meravillosa Creatura (2019), Almonds in Bloom (2018), Corpuri celeste (2020). She was part of several choreographic projects: Femmes monumentale. Femme Vegetale., Simple Pleasures (choreographer Cosmin Manolescu), Undisciplined body policies (project initiated by Descentrat), Move Fest Kosice.
