The
Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance
at
Antonin Artaud Performance Centre
Brunel
University, London
ARTAUD
FORUM 2 (2012)
performance
installations by Camilla Baratt-Due (N/D), Joerg Brinkmann (D), Arthur
Elsenaar (NL), Kate Genevieve & Alex Peckham (UK), Rebecca Horrox (UK)
and Dani Ploeger (NL/D/UK)
Over a period of roughly two-and-a-half
decades, from the 1980's until the early 2000's, digital consumer technologies
rapidly progressed from novelty items for a niche audience to virtually
indispensable constituents of the everyday lives of the majority of people
in the Western world. As a result of the experience of these technologies
as integral parts of the ordinariness of everyday life, the euphoric fantasies
about the world-changing potential of technologized bodies and the transformative
power of information technology, which until recently dominated large
parts of popular scientific discourse and arts production, are increasingly
losing their appeal and credibility. In this context, and inspired by
his increasing boredom with omnipresent computer screens, media theorist
Russell Davies suggests that we might be approaching a post-digital era,
"where most people have powerful and easy to use devices full of applications
and services which work well and satisfyingly, where you can get all the
media you want on all the screens you like" (Davies 2011).
The performance installations that form
part of this little show might be seen as a response to early symptoms
of this condition: The application of technology in these works is no
longer motivated by a desire to showcase the extraordinary features of
hi-tech applications, nor are they concerned with speculations about digitally
enhanced super-bodies. Instead, they explore technologies' (both digital
and analogue) role in the gestures and interactions of human bodies in
the everyday life of the present.
Camilla Baratt-Due
Body: Speak (2011-2012)
Body parts speak about their memories
through loudspeakers, which are attached to, or inserted into, my body.
--
Joerg Brinkmann
I'm Hearing My Ears All
the Time (2010)
I am wearing a sound-responsive robotic
ear movement device, inspired by a viral Youtube film featuring the ear
movement of a group of piglets.
--
Arthur Elsenaar
Face Shift (2005)
Computer controlled small electrical impulses
are employed to trigger my facial muscles into rendering involuntary expressions.
In this algorithmic facial choreography piece, both sides of the face
are controlled by identical algorithms, but one is slightly faster, over
time creating visual shifting patterns from symmetry to asymmetry (and
back again). Over the duration of the facial dance piece, the execution
of the algorithms is accelerated.
--
Kate Genevieve & Alex Peckham
Latent Heart
(work in progress) (2012)
An installation for one person that combines eighteenth century illusion techniques with contemporary sensor technology, to stage a visceral encounter with your own reflection and heartbeat.
--
Rebecca Horrox
For Hadrian (2012)
An exploration of non-digital technologies,
including various grabbers and arm extenders, juxtaposed with images and
a soundtrack sung by my grandmother, Hadrian, whose grabbers I am using
in this performance.
--
Dani Ploeger
ELECTRODE (2011)
An Anuform¨ anal electrode connected to
a modified Peritone EMG sensor registers the activity of my sphincter
muscle. Anuform¨ and Peritone are mass-produced readily available medical
devices for the treatment of incontinence problems. I fake the orgasm
of an anonymous subject who took part in an experiment into the nature
of the male orgasm in 1980. I attempt to replicate the subject's sphincter
muscle contraction pattern, which was registered during masturbation and
orgasm in the experiment. I repeatedly perform the same pattern. The data
is projected onto a screen in the form of graphs and is used for digital
sound synthesis.
______
Sunday 1 April, 11:30am - 1pm, Antonin
Artaud Performance Centre
Critical Performance Technologies: Disowning
Geek Culture
Round table session
Artist presenters: Camilla Baratt-Due,
Joerg Brinkmann, Arthur Elsenaar, Kate Genevieve, Rebecca Horrox; Response
panel: Alissa Clarke (performance studies scholar, De Montfort University),
Sophia Graefe (media art critic, Bauhaus University Weimar), Niall Richardson
(media and film theorist, University of Sussex)
Chair: Dani Ploeger (Brunel University)
This session will explore cultural critical
perspectives on performance technologies and discuss possibilities for
a radical departure from technology-fetishizing approaches, toward practices
that take their cue from a gesture- and culture-based approach to the
performing body in digital performance. The artists who presented their
work as part of the Cabinets of Post-Digital Curiosities show on Saturday
night will give short three-slide presentations on the backgrounds of
their work. A response panel, consisting of media, performance and cultural
theory scholars, and the audience, are subsequently invited to reflect
on these presentations from the perspective of their respective disciplines.
+ + + + + + + +
This event
is programmed by the Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance and
supported by the Brunel School of Arts and Brunel University Graduate
School. BADco's workshop is a part of LAB021 - European Platform, for
Interdisciplinary Research on Artistic Methodologies,with the support
of the Culture
(c) 2012
The Centre for Contemporary and Digital Performance, Johannes Birringer (acting director)