2017
Collaborative new media performance, 40 minutes
Premiered at CMTV, Spokane, Washington
Smartphones, TV and radio receivers, computer vision, Google Street View, GPS, real-time visualization
Direction, Staging, System and Interaction Design: Sangjun Yoo
In collaboration with Partners Through Art Adaptations
Choreography: Karla Parbon
Dancers: Karla Parbon, Brooke Grissom, Melanie S. Williams
Music: Rhys Chatham, James Arthur, Anne Imhof
nevertheless is a 40-minute performance built around the smartphone as both subject and instrument. Its six sequences move between choreography, improvisation, and live data visualization. In three of them, the dancers use their phones as performative instruments; in the others, they hold the still, absorbed postures of everyday screen use, turning a habitual gesture into something an audience watches together.
During the device sequences, dancers capture selfies, voices, and movement, which are transmitted in real time to a projection interface. Face recognition and sound modulation turn these inputs into evolving images and sounds. Live feeds from TV and radio receivers, Google Street View, and GPS enter the same interface, where they are recomposed and reappropriated alongside the dancers’ inputs. Layered voices, repeated gestures, and emerging synthesized tones build a polyvocal field in which individual and collective expression become hard to separate.
The performance asks what remains of a person inside a medium built to refresh and overwrite. Faces and voices are captured, processed, and replaced, yet a human presence persists through the system nevertheless.
Special thanks to Laboratory Residency, Spokane; CMTV for the generous use of its space; and Spokane Arts for funding support.
