‘uncharted property’ is a research based performance project that explores digital corporeality and our perception of avatars. Through the imagination of sensual aspects of virtual worlds, we engage with digital corporeality and its implications for movement. We explore sensual aspects of digital spaces in a performative way, starting from everyday bodily experiences and slowly leading to unknown, fictional experiences that are less fantastic but almost real. The fact that from a visual point of view the difference between the digital and the analogue world can be so small draws attention to other aspects: the experience of one’s own physicality in relation to the digital world, but also the transcendence of it.
‘uncharted property’ has had two phases of development funded by tanz:digital. In 2022, we (Aaron Lang, Maurice Wald and Felix Ansmann Müller) developed a digital video and in 2023 we (Aaron Lang, Maurice Wald, Felix Ansmann Müller, Przemek Kaminski) developed a stage performance.
In the first phase of the project, in autumn 2022, we created a digital short film based on a setup in which the performer’s movements were transmitted in real time to two avatars. Through direct visual feedback, the performer was able to take advantage of the idiosyncrasies of different motion-capture technologies to make the avatars interact with themselves (Rokoko Suit, based on accelerometers, and PoseAI, a computer vision-based motion-capture system). The dancer’s handling of the reading errors and the material requirements of motion capturing became the main theme of the choreography and the digital film. The short film (16min.) in which the avatars talk about their ‘experiences’ was shown on glasshouse.berlin in July 2023.
We are particularly interested not only in the failure of the human body to reflect these principles, but also in the borderline where these principles of digital physicality and the principles of non-digital physicality develop a new, chimerical quality. How sensual can an avatar become? How well can an avatar read the mood in space? How does an avatar become emotional during performances?
Impressions of the research and filming process in October 2022 at Lake Studios Berlin in November 2022 .
Funded by Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien in the program
NEUSTART KULTUR, [Hilfsprogramm DIS-TANZEN/ tanz:digital/ DIS-TANZ-START] of the Dachverband
Tanz Germany.
