Moving or Being Moved

The everyday performance of domestic labor is teleported into a surreal game world where an emotionally responsive AI chatbot provides no answers.

In this world, motion capture technology translates movement into data that can be unbound from the human body. Yvonne’s No Manifesto becomes a framework for understanding the existential impact of this new dataset. What happens to movement when it is divorced from affect and feeling? What happens to dance without the basic premise of embodiment and breath?

3D Modeling and Motion Capture: Sabine Gruffat, Adobe Mixamo

Music: 

The Birth of Venus, © 1982 Musica International (dab of Ciani0Musica, Inc.) (ASCAP). Composed and Performed by Suzanne Ciani. From the album Seven Waves on the Seventh Wave label

Soul Girl, © 1973 20th Century, written by Joel Biel and performed by Ahmad Jamal. From the album Ahmad Jamal ’73

All other music composed and performed by Sabine Gruffat

Text:

Trisha Brown, Accumulation (1971)

Yvonne Rainer, No Manifesto (1965)

Thomas F. DeFrantz, DeFrantz, Thomas F., and Anita Gonzalez, eds. Black Performance Theory. Duke University Press (2014)

IPsoft’s Amelia, Human AI. Research studies of motion in relation affect and mood