Moving Digits X Ka Fai Choy

Moving Digits

Moving Digits: Augmented Dance for Engaged Audience aims to enhance audience understanding and engagement in contemporary dance performances, and to allow to experience dance in an augmented way (even after the performance). The project also aims to empower dancers, choreographers and technicians with further tools for expression, archival and analysis. The use of technology to sense dancers is not new, but the combination of bodily sensing, motion tracking, visualization and sonification is, and especially so in a participatory form. The main aim is to use the advantages of available sensor and mixed media technologies in communicating the body language to the audience. Some of the main motivating questions during the process should be - in which ways can technology translate, transform or extend our bodily existence in space and time? What sort of new effects and meanings can this mediation produce or reveal? How can technology enhance the participatory potential of a dance performance? How can we use technology to enable two-way communication with the audience?

Technological Flesh

TECHNOLOGICAL FLESH explores the possibilities of digital dance technics as a supernatural dance experience. Inspired by the concept of post-human choreography, the project speculates on choreographic expressions of Trance culture in dance, movement and music.
Can we digitised the dance of the Supernatural? Can we measure the digital notations of trance movement?
TECHNOLOGICAL FLESH proposes new perspectives on how the body can transcend beyond physical boundaries and venture into the digital cosmos of virtual realities. Our choreographic exploration aims to expand the human intellect, physical and psychological capacities in Dance. And maybe we are all have an itch to transcend beyond our physical flesh.
TECHNOLOGICAL FLESH re-imagines the perception of our body and seek to provide an immersive participatory dance experience engaging with digital technologies like data visualisation, motion capturing, augmented and mixed reality.

Ka Fai Choy

Choy Ka Fai a Berlin-based Singaporean Artist. He is inspired by the histories and theorizations that together contain the uncertainties of the future. His research springs from a desire to understand the conditioning of the human body, its intangible memories and the forces shaping its expressions. These factors converge into complex articulations at the intersection of art, design and technology. Ka Fai graduated from the Royal College of Art, London, with MA in Design Interaction in 2011 and was conferred the Young Artist Award by the National Arts Council, Singapore, in 2010. He completed a 12-month Artist-in-Residency program at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin in 2014 and is currently the Factory Artist (resident artist) at tanzhausnrw Dusseldorf. His projects have been presented in major festival worldwide, including Sadler’s Wells London (2016), ImPulsTanz Festival, Vienna (2018 & 2015) and Tanz Im August, Berlin (2015 & 2013).

http://www.ka5.info

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With Technological Flesh residency, artists Choy Ka Fai and Maria Judova explored the possibilities of digital dance technics as a supernatural dance experience. Using digital technologies like data visualisation, motion capture, augmented and mixed reality, Technological Flesh aimed to re-imagines the perception of our body and sought to provide an immersive participatory dance experience. The outcome of the residency is a participatory Supernatural Dance Experience, allowing both audience and performer to interact beyond our physical sense.

The team carried out research on trance induction and sensory stimulation. The aim was to focus on the auditory, kinaesthetic and spiritual induction for both the dancer and the audience. For this purpose, Choy Ka Fai accomplished field research on rituals of Siberian Shamans going into trance. The technology partner, media department of the University of Applied Sciences Duesseldorf (Hochschule Düsseldorf), hosted studio experiments in the Innovation Hub - MIREVI (Mixed Reality and Visualization). With the use of motion capture technology made possible to observe the choreographic expression of trance and imagine a way of communicating or visualizing these movement data into an artistic experience. The graphic team created a 3D visual landscape to extend the experience into VR.

The aim of the project was to appropriate narratives and technologies to imagine alternative states of Living and Knowing. While seeking to provide an immersive performative experience, Choy Ka Fai and his collaborators engaged with shamanistic practices and rituals over Asia as well with digital technologies. The team brought together radical and authentic skills, experiences and expertise. In order to refrain from the recurring sense of mystification, the project created a space for authentic means of expression and encouraged critical dialogue between creators from different backgrounds as well as between the audience and the creators.

Interview with Ka Fai Choy, at CENTQUATRE-Paris, during the STARTS Residencies Days - 2020

Read the final report