a_networked_performance_system
Imagine yourself carefree and swaying to the music at your favorite local nightspot, when suddenly you notice, mixed within the beats and the visuals up on the screen, the sounds and images of someone logging onto the dance floor. As you continue to move, the distant interloper’s face and voice looms and spins, adding a poetic chant to the mix of music, attracting and repelling attention in turns, as you realize she can see and hear you as well.
Open_Dancefloor explores the psychological, geographic, and social polarities that lie between and among the dancefloor and the distant war zone. The project imagines an underground danceclub environment where refugee scholars and seditionists of all ages and backgrounds have taken to utilizing popular DJ sessions as a conduit through which to communicate their otherwise unheard messages.
Open_Dancefloor's technology features a completely mobile telematic system that combines individually processed audio and video streams (manipulated with max/MSP/jitter/modul8) transmitted via high-bandwidth networks to create a single sensorial space built in real-time by the distant and local performers on the dancefloor.
It is our goal to create discourse on the dancefloor through a repurposing of teleconferencing technology and a rethinking of the nightclub as a forum for free-speech. By enlisting the incredible talent of these performers/artists transmitting from around the world we hope to create an unforgettable and culturally enriching media experience for both the distant and local participants.
The range of distant performances will revolve around specific themes pertaining to the iterative event and will consist of: spoken word, dance, gesture, speeches, live telematic interaction, light installation+ set design, and additonal music - each transmitted through, over and around a simultaneous audio/visual performance by our DJs and VJs happening live in the space.
Distant Artist/Performers who have committed to participate in future iterations of Open_Dancefloor:
Simin Farkhondeh Minou, Nao Bustamante
Maris Bustamante, Lindsay Brandon*, Richard Jenik
Rene Garcia, /s\a/nd\*, Amanda Law*,Ricardo Dominguez*
Connie Samaras, Eileen Myles, Synthia Payne
Martha Wallner, Lisa Brenneis
Open_Dancefloor Demo 1-12-08 (mov or wmv)
Open_Dancefloor Demo 12-6-07 (mov or wmv)
system design/development: Adriene Jenik, Charley Ten
Project supported by: CRCA, CALit2, The Russell Foundation
