Bodytext

by Simon Biggs and Sue Hawksley
with audio by Garth Paine

Bodytext is a performance work that involves speech, movement and the body. A dancer's movement and speech are re-mediated within an augmented environment employing real-time motion tracking, voice recognition, interpretative language systems, projection and granular audio synthesis. The acquired speech, a description of an imagined dance, is re-written through projected digital display and sound synthesis, the performer causing texts to interact and recombine with one another through their subsequent compositional arrangement. What is written is affected by the dance whilst the emerging recombinant descriptions determine what is danced. The work questions and seeks insight into the relations between kinaesthetic experience, memory, agency and language. Bodytext was developed whilst the artists were in residence at the Bundanon Trust, New South Wales, and the VIPRe Lab at the University of Western Sydney.

an articulate animal production 2010

Premiered at Critical Path, Sydney, Australia as part of the SEAM 2010 festival
Performed as part of the Figures of the Visceral Conference, September 2010, Inspace, Edinburgh University, UK
Performed as part of the Dance Live Festival, October 2010, Banchory, UK
Performed as part of Gaming the Game conference, April 2012, University of California Davis, USA

video of performance at Critical Path, Sydney, 2010.

Stills of performance at Critical Path, Sydney, 2010.