Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
Middlesex University
Gravity Shift - an interactive video installation
Recently presented at the world's foremost international dance-screen festival, Cinedans in Amsterdam, this video installation looks at how we might read gravity through witnessing another body. It aims to decentre the viewer’s relationship to the installation through presentation of a dancer whose movement is affected by a moving pull of gravity.
The direction of gravity perceived by an audience remains constantly downwards within live dance and performance. Although there are countless theatrical techniques that try to defy this (aerial flying wires, balletic techniques etc), performers are inevitably subject to gravity’s omnipresent attraction. In live performance both audience and performers experience this pull creating a universal sense of ’down‘ both on and off stage. This shared sensation aids to create a sense of stability or centredness within the viewer's mind, as the effect of gravity witnessed on stage concurs with their own local sensations. Post-modern art, particularly installation art, has frequently sought to question assumed stabilities through a shifting of the viewer's perception; for example Swinging Room (Carston Holler: 2007), See Saw (Robert Morris, 1971), Zero G (Arts Catalyst, 2000-2004).
This installation aims to create a situation that decentres the viewer's physical awareness through a presentation of human movement where the pull of gravity has been dynamically distorted. In practice this involved the creation of an automated dance floor on top of a flight simulator base which could pivot in conjunction with a video camera. From the point of view of the camera the dance floor would always be aligned to the camera's frame.
One part of a combined project with choreographer Yael Flexer, funded by ACE £99,000 and in collaboration with Sam Wane, of the Robotics department at Staffordshire University.
Funding and in kind support from CueSim, Landsdown Centre for Electronic Art, Staffordshire University and Arts Council England.
