Trans-sensory hallucination

Authors

  • Johannes Birringer Design And Performance Lab

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/1807-9288.2018v14n1p52

Abstract

After a short reflection on theories of the digital and non-digital, this essay is concerned with questions of common perception, un-common senses and a strong focus on kinaesthetic, trans-sensorial notions of ex-stasis, and the material affects of environments. The author discusses examples drawn from atmospheric studies, architecture and choreographic objects, as well as the design of wearables used in sensorial performance environments which themselves are conceived as formative, not built or constructed in a stable form. Furthermore, basing its investigation of such elemental environments and aural choreographies in recent productions of the DAP-Lab, the essay explores the impact of wearables on movement choreography and immersion within choreographic installations. It also addresses more speculative developments of how bodies and wearables come to affect, and be affected by, augmented reality and virtual reality interfaces within kinetic atmospheres – here called “kimospheres” – in the sense in which the composer Xenakis had envisioned reverberant multimedia architectures and spatial intensities to be live instruments, not static objects or envelopes.

Author Biography

Johannes Birringer, Design And Performance Lab

Johannes Birringer is an independent choreographer/media artist. Since 1993 he has been artistic director of AlienNation Co (www.aliennationcompany.com), and  has created numerous dance-theatre works, videos, digital media installations and site-specific performances in collaboration with artists in Europe, the Americas, China, Japan and Australia. His film installation “Vespucci” toured Brazil in 2001; a dance film, “XU”, was created and exhibited in Beijing in 2004, and “Canções dos olhos / Augenlieder“ (with music by Paulo C. Chagas) was featured at SARC, Belfast and the 2007 Dança em Foco in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The collaborative telematic installation “East by West“ was shown at DEAF2003, Rotterdam. The oratorio “Corpo, Carne e Espírito,“ created with Paulo C. Chagas, opened the 2008 FIT Theatre Festival in Belo Horizonte. He lives in Houston and London, and co-directs the Design and Performance Lab at the Artaud Center, Brunel University London, where he is a professor of performance technologies (www.brunel.ac.uk/dap). Together with fashion designer Michèle Danjoux he has created immersive dance works featuring electro-acoustic and sensortized wearables. DAP-Lab’s “Suna no Onna“ premiered in London in 2007; the mixed reality installation “UKIYO [Moveable Worlds]“ premiered in 2009-10 before touring in Eastern Europe in 2010. A new dance opera, “for the time being/Victory over the Sun,“ premiered at Watermans International Digital Arts Festival in 2012; an expanded version was shown at Sadler’s Wells (2014). The dance film “Lung Pulmo Pneumo“ was exhibited at Cinedans Festival, Amsterdam, in 2014. He collaborated on the European METABODY project, and DAP-Lab’s kimospheres, a series of immersive installations, began touring in 2015-18. He is also founding director of Interaktionslabor, an annual media lab housed in an abandoned coalmine in the Saarland (http://interaktionslabor.de).

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Published

2018-08-01

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 1 (2018)

Section

Articles

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