I’m so happy to share the news that mixed relations, a project proposed
by myself and Elle Mehrmand, is the recipient of a grant from the
University of California Institute for Research in the Arts! This is the
next big project I’ll be working on for the next year. You can read a
brief description of the project here…
mixed relations by Elle Mehrmand and Micha Cárdenas
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*/“The partners do not precede their relating: all that is, is the fruit
of becoming with.”/
-Donna Haraway, When Species Meet
mixed relations is a collaboration between Elle Mehrmand and Micha
Cárdenas consisting of a series of performances that explore the
relations between bodies and technology within mixed realities. The
performances will focus on using the body as an instrument and as a site
of exploration for performance in mixed realities. The goal is to look
at bodies in relation to each other in these realities, as well as in
relation to their instruments and to the technologies which extend and
multiply them, sonically, visually and physically.
The project will involve two people performing in actual and virtual
space. It will include explorations of a number of technologies which
bring the body into mixed realities, outside of its daily boundaries,
beyond the skin. Live audio synthesis will be achieved using Max/MSP to
respond to body movements. These movements will be detected through
various technologies including marker based motion capture, flex
sensors, pressure sensors, light sensors, accelerometers and the
Nintendo Wii. The performers’ body movements will be mirrored and
extended into online 3D networked environments such as Second Life and
Opensim, which will be projected into the physical performance space.
Simultaneously, live realtime video will be streamed into the virtual
performance space, from cameras that are attached to the performers’
bodies. Scaled projections, scale models in virtual space and the
projection of virtual instruments onto actual objects will be used to
create a mixing of the actual and virtual, blurring the lines between
the two.
The performances will explore themes of affective tension and
anticipation, techno-fetishism, and D.I.Y. cyborg bodies. Our main
inspirations come from the history and traditions of performance art,
such as Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Stelarc and Orlan, so we see art
concerned primarily with bodies in relation, and the body and technology
as the main works we are in conversation with.
While much performance art has looked at relations between people, or
has engaged with motion capture technologies, mixed relations seeks to
combine the rapidly spreading cultural phenomenon of embodied
interfaces, exemplified in the Nintendo Wii, with live collaborative
improvisational performance. Through the usage of networked online
environments, the bodies of the performers are multiplied and folded,
immersed in multiple locations and realities at once, creating another
layer of relation. The mixing of realities in this project can be seen
as paralleling or exploring of our own personal experiences of queer
mixing of genders and sexualities, queering new media.
Virtual worlds such as Second Life are facilitating the development of
new identities and genders, which - as of yet - allow for unimagined
relations and relationships. Through the use of mixed reality
technologies in performance, mixed relations seeks to look closely at
these new relationships and how they affect our everyday lives and our
horizons of possibility.
Comment at:
http://bang.calit2.net/tts/2009/05/01/mixed-relations-won-the-ucira-emerging-fields-award/
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More about UCIRA here: http://www.ucira.ucsb.edu/
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