1
2
3
4
5
 
A Cure for Surveilance / 2007
Jonah Bokaer & Liubo Borissov
 
***

http://2rem.net/cure4s/main.html

Cure for Surveillance addresses the human body through the use of digital media, and is designed both to utilize and critique contemporary technologies of surveillance in our society. With this in mind, the artists use motion capture technology to pre-record an archive of movement phrases, to be displayed in the installation as a way of heightening interactivity with pedestrians in the public space of Dance Theater Workshop. Through a number of live cameras installed in the gallery space, the images of these pedestrians will be recorded upon entrance into Dance Theater Workshop, and will be projected onto the inner wall and outer window of the facilities, creating a spatial dichotomy between “in” and “out”. The interplay between inner and outer space, and public and private space is examined in this installation.




DTW gallery, April 9 - 28 during hours of operation. Best viewing times after 5pm
*
Screenshots of visitors interactiong with the installation
 
A Cure for Surveillance is a continuation of a few years of research and experimentation into movement and dance and its ability to endow technology with an expressive quality. Here technology is used to emphasize and at the same time blur an ever-so tenuous link between reality and unreality. In addition, the socio-political context of the piece, the transformation of a public space through a technology most often used for the invasion of privacy, reflects on an ongoing examination of personal choices of means for expression.

This project should be considered in context of three past works:
Between an Arrow and a Fall was a culmination of my year-long residency at the DTW, in which Edisa Weeks and myself examined the transformation of time and space through movement and stillness.    
We created scenarios of real-time interactions between a dancer and her digital reproduction.
  
Two projections, one on the outside of the space and another on the inside combine live video streams and pre-rendered motion capture loops, which engage people in the space with the use of video-tracking and shape recognition techniques implemented using custom-built software
VIDEO DOCUMENTATION
        Interactivity video at the Gallery Space.
        Jonah Bokaer developing a language of phrases to be used in         response to live video stream from the gallery space.