Bodytext is a performance work that involves speech, movement and the body.

The performer is sited within an environment augmented and mediated by various technologies, including sensing instrumentation, speech recognition systems and digital audio-visual displays. Employing real-time motion capture, voice recognition and generative language systems, the dancer's movement and speech are acquired and re-mediated within the performance space. The acquired speech is re-written within a projected digital display, the text animated by and re-presenting the performer's gestures. The performer can, through their movements, cause texts to interact and recombine with one another by how they manipulate their relative compositional arrangement in the projected imagery. Thus what is written is determined in part by the dance. The work questions and offers insight into the relations between kinaesthetic experience, agency, representation and language.

About the Artists

Simon Biggs, Research Professor in Art, Edinburgh College of Art, UK Simon Biggs is a visual and inter-disciplinary artist, he uses the computer and interactive systems within large-scale installation, web-based artworks and other contexts to explore issues around identity and reality as social constructs. His work has been shown internationally, including Tate Modern, South London Gallery, South Bank Centre, New British Library, Whitechapel Gallery and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Tate Gallery and FACT Liverpool; Maclellan Gallery and Collins Gallery, Glasgow; Centre de Georges Pompidou, Paris; Academy de Kunste and Kulturforum, Berlin; Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Holland; Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Musea Mimara, Zagreb; Macau Arts Museum; Cameraworks, San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Paco des Artes, University of Sao Paulo; McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch.

Sue Hawksley UK Since graduating from the Royal Ballet School in 1983, Sue has performed extensively with companies such as Rambert Dance Company, Mantis, Scottish Ballet Steps-Out and Philippe Genty, as well as many freelance projects. She established articulate animal in 2007 as an umbrella under which to explore interdisciplinary practices based on the moving body. Sue has previously made solo-works, works for students including Northern School of Contemporary Dance, University of Derby and the Dance School of Scotland, and collaborations with visual-artists. Sue's teaching experience includes Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Scottish School of Contemporary Dance, Scottish Ballet, Phoenix Dance Theatre, the Royal Ballet School, and freelance classes and workshops. Her research concerns contemporary dance, somatics, embodiment and mediation which she is pursuing through a studentship at Edinburgh College of Art.



18/08/2010

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