Proxies
Computation, Performance, Design
(on-going performance research project)
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
At the intersection of performance, computation, and design, "Proxies" investigates partnering as a site of care. Drawing on research in data privacy, “Proxies” simultaneously gestures to two investigations: first, an inquiry into and critique of the assumption that data can be a “stand-in” and an approximation of reality, and second, an attempt to render visible what nuance of lived experience may be lost in our removal from it through datafied representation. This serves as a way to illuminate the embodied relationships that data are meant to represent but fail to do so in high fidelity — that is, what dimensions of embodied experience of which we may become dispossessed if data have more rights than people do. ​
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The work-in-progress features custom-fabricated sensors that capture the kinesthetic dimensions of physical interaction. The dancers' data is rendered into a generative visualization that serves as a score for live musicians to investigate relationship to both instrument and score (deconstructed and reorchestrated Pyotr Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony for two musicians). As a whole, the creative project is intended as its own provocation to consider not only the limits of what can be captured through technology, but also how the fidelity of what is captured may be compromised when moving across kinesthetic, computational, visual, and musical representations.
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The project is supported by the Knight Foundation, Jacob's Pillow "Pillow Lab", Boston Foundation "Live Arts Boston" grant, and the Harvard ArtLab. View the ongoing case study, designed by Steven Geofrey (Fluid Encodings). ​
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Creative Team:
Artistic Director: Ilya Vidrin
Design + Visualization: Steven Geofrey
Creative Technologist: Peter Martel
Engineering + Fabrication: Eugene Zeleny
Wearable Glove Design: Rosa Weinberg
Musicians: Eric Seligman and Mel Hsu
Movement Artists: Margot Aknin, Dara Capley, Elizabeth Epsen, Hannah Franz, Raxel Kempenaar, Leah Misano, Melissa Sherman-Bennett, Valeria Solomonoff, and Cassie Wang.
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Cinematography by Sue Murad
Process film created by Jessi Stegall
Production Assistant: Krista Brochu
TEAM
