28/05/2024
MOCO presents: PRACTICE WORKS
The conference program of MOCO'24 Beyond Control includes paper and poster presentations from representatives of leading institutions in the research area of movement and computing around the world. Presented at the Parnassos Cultural Centre on Friday 31 May, the program also includes a selection of more than 15 Practice Works, which encompass VR installations, robot encounters, workshops, and performances - both indoor and in public spaces.
The Practice Works programme also includes 'Message Bank' by Nick Atkins, 'Catching the Inverse Ghosts' by Kristin Carlson, Greg Corness, and Sargylana Cherepanova, and 'Zephyr Mekhane' by Steven Kemper and Aurie Hsu:
Nick Atkins - MESSAGE BANK
“Message Bank” is a self-guided digital performance about trust and surveillance. Audiences are handed a mobile device, headphones and invited to step into a fictional world where they play the role of a recruit. Their mission is to listen to intercepted conversations and detect who, amongst six suspects, has recently used a fraudulent credit card. A glitch in the device and a mysterious text from an unknown user reveals this isn’t about a credit card. This is about intimacy, exposure, the desire to watch and be watched. The mission is compromised. The target is at large. What’s left isn’t a whodunnit. What’s left is an unknown voice in a box asking you to trust it. A private moment for you to experience in public.
“Message Bank” was first produced by Operated Coin for Sydney Festival 2023. The presentation at MOCO offers an adaption of the performance with a run time of 25-minutes as well as 5-minute demo version. The performance is location-based and features an interaction between a hand-held device and a series of low energy Bluetooth beacons. The interaction unlocks a fictional story designed to blend in with real world environments such as public squares. It contributes to a body of location-based and mobile-media performances and seeks to experiment with methods for the creation of theatrical events using digital tools.
Nick Atkins is a freelance theatre maker and producer focused on new writing and digital theatre. His work has been shortlisted for the Patrick White and Rodney Seaborn Awards and presented by companies including Sydney Festival, Riverside Theatres, Q Theatre as well as Casula Powerhouse. He is currently a PhD candidate with the Creativity and Cognition Studios, UTS and leads the creative studio Operated Coin based on Darug Country in Parramatta.
www.operatedcoin.com
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Kristin Carlson, Greg Corness, Sargylana Cherepanova - CATCHING THE INVERSE GHOSTS
In the physical world, we as humans are used to consciously utilizing our space to help navigate our balance, directions, and intention. This virtual reality installation enables the mover to explore their visible relationships to space by using a Mind's Eye perspective to playfully interject themselves in a virtual space.
Kristin Carlson is an Associate Professor in the Creative Technologies Program at Illinois State University, exploring the role that computation plays in embodied creative processes. She has a history of working in choreography, computational creativity, media performance, interactive art and design tools due to her background in movement, technical theater, interaction design and programming. Kristin is a researcher with the movingstories: Tools for Digital Movement, Meaning and Interaction research partnership exploring the cognition of movement experience and designing movement applications for creativity support tools.
Greg Corness is a Researcher and Artist working with embodied interaction in media environments. His background in music, theatre and dance provides the basis for his research which focus on games, interdisciplinary improvisation, distributed cognition in performance, and methodologies for researching experience in games and performance.
Sargylana Cherepanova is a game designer and an interdisciplinary Sakha artist that creates videogames as a form of art. The Sakha people are Indigenous to Sakha Republic, located in North-East-Siberian part of russia. Her art practice is mainly focused on creating videogame prototypes with the decolonial focus in various game engines. She dreams that Sakha Republic could become free.
Steven Kemper - ZEPHYR MEKHANE: an Interactive Installation for Vibration-Motor Activated “Wind” Chimes
Wind chimes are one of the oldest musical instruments still in existence today. They also represent one of the earliest types of autonomous instruments, activated by the wind rather than human agency. Zephyr Mekhane is an interactive installation consisting of sets of Tremolo-Chimes: tubular metallic wind chimes that have been modified by removing the striker and wind catcher. MIDI-controlled vibration motors suspended in each chime produce continuous, tremolo-like sounds where the dynamic shape can be controlled over time. Each set of Tremolo-Chimes is activated either through synthesized “wind” or through sensors that detect the proximity of participants to the chimes. Both synthesized wind and sensor input are fed through a mass-link physical model, evoking the movements of a wind-driven clapper bouncing off traditional wind chimes. Synthesized wind represents the default control mode of the installation when participants are not interacting with the sensors. When a participant enters the sensing field, their body will actuate the system in a variety of different ways.
Steven Kemper is a composer, music technologist, and instrument designer. As a composer, Steven creates music for acoustic instruments, instruments and computers, musical robots, dance, and video. He is a co-founder of Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI), a collective dedicated to creating robotic instruments. He also co-developed the RAKS (Remote electroAcoustic Kinesthetic Sensing) System, a wireless sensor interface designed specifically for belly dancers with composer and dancer Aurie Hsu. Steven’s research has been published in Leonardo, Organised Sound, and Frontiers in Robotics and AI. Steven is currently Associate Professor of Computer Music and Digital Arts at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
Aurie Hsu creates interactive electronic music, often collaborating with musical robots. She performs with the Remote electroAcoustic Kinesthetic Sensing (RAKS) system, a wireless sensor interface for dance. Her pieces have been presented at NIME, ICMC, MOCO, Art Basel Miami, SEAMUS, and the Ammerman Center. Her research has been published in Leonardo Music Journal and in conference proceedings of the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, International Workshop on Movement and Computing, and the International Computer Music Conference. Aurie is currently Associate Professor of Computer Music and Digital Arts in TIMARA and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the Oberlin Conservatory.
MOCO'24 Conference registration
https://moco24.movementcomputing.org/attend/
MOCO'24 Full conference programme
https://moco24.movementcomputing.org/moco24-programme.pdf
