2019
Role: Original concept, Direction, Choreography, Creative Coding
BOTHER [/ˈbɒðə/] (verb) - Take the trouble to do something / Feel concern about or interest in / Cause trouble or annoyance by interrupting or otherwise inconveniencing someone.
BOTHER is an interactive and durational dance piece inviting the audience to influence, positively or negatively, the fate of the dancer in front of them.
It explores the notions of control, care and digital harassment, questioning how we behave differently when interacting with each other through the proxy of technology. It also intends the portray the impact of that alien agency, inducing pleasure, joy, violence or pain.
Depending on the emotional state selected by the audience, the graphics projected will change and the dancer will adopt specific movement textures while improvising, giving an embodied and visual representation of the impact of the audience's choice.
BOTHER is set up as a social experiment, exploring how the audience will react when given the power to control the dancer. Will they behave in an empathetic way, allowing the dancer to be free and happy? Or will they act in a more sadistic way, generating violent reactions? Will they care more about the person in front of them or the entertainment they get from the performance?
Performers
Clemence Debaig, Marialivia Bernardi, Ashley Kim Wakefield, Kristia Morabito, Oliver Charles, Marcello Licitra, Tracy Garcia, Konstantina Katsikari, Ana Vallejo Buitrago, Chloe Bellou, Pedro De Marchi
Technical details
The full interactive system is handled by a custom programme made in openFrameworks (C++) using computer vision algorithms (OpenCV). The programme also includes corrective geometry algorithms to align the camera view and the projector for the body projection (courtesy of Keita Ikeda). The buttons are connected to Arduino Nanos, each also connected to openFrameworks.
The dancer is tracked from the ceiling by a Kinect. Using the tracking data, graphics are projected onto the dancer's body from a projector also placed on the ceiling. Two sets of buttons are placed in front of the audience, a blue and a red one.
For more details and behind the scenes explanations:
> BOTHER on Goldsmiths Computational Arts Blog
Latest exhibitions:
> How is THAT working for you, Goldsmiths University, London - September 2019
> The London Ultra, Bargehouse, Oxo Tower, London - November 2019