New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance - book preview
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A detailed presentation of forthcoming monograph New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance for The 6th International Symposium of the Mobile and Creation Research Group (IRCAV / Paris 3-Labex ICCA): Colloque Corps Et Mobiles: mobile body
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New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance - book preview
- 1. Camille Baker, PhD Reader, School of Communication Design University for the Creative Arts, Epsom, UK New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance - book preview
- 2. story of the book
- 3. How mobile devices are used: to make participatory, interactive artworks or performances; tool, guide, co-creator and companion by creators to make intimate yet social experiences for audiences. showcases artists who have repurposed the device transforming it to become a new collaborative medium, a full visual, synaesthetic, interactive, and performative medium for expression and social change. features exciting projects in the creative evolution of the medium. New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance
- 4. Themes explored: embodiment of mobile, wearable and networked technology, liveness and presence, connectivity, intermediality, etc and their place within performance. intimate and phenomenological mobile aesthetic that has evolved within networked performance and media art projects; artists have repurposed the device – transforming it from merely a communication device, to become a new collaborative medium, a full visual, synaesthetic, interactive, and performative tool. New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance
- 5. organisation The book is organised in three quite distinct parts: Part I - theories around ‘affordances’ or attributes enabled by the smartphone: intimacy, connection, liveness and presence, and embodiment. Part II focuses on intermedial mobile works, the artists develop ing these practices, including projects video, telematic, wearable, VR/AR/ and mixed reality and other mobile technologies and affordances in performance, as well as my own practice trajectory and projects. Part III features an eclectic sampling of intriguing emerging and known artists and performance creators working primarily in Europe and the UK, but also South America and beyond.
- 6. Part I – mobile media aesthetic affordances This part is focused ‘affordances’ of the modern smartphone and critical voices on these topics: Chapter 1: intimacy of personal use, Chapter 2: differing senses of connectivity, Chapter 3: liveness and presence within the network, and Chapter 4: embodiment of mobile devices in modern life and performance contexts
- 7. Part II - Mobile Performance: Evolving Practices Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices a)participatory performance & intermediality MMP is a subset of ‘Intermediality’. According to Rosemary Klich and Edward Scheer, intermediality can be: […] both a creative and analytical approach based on the perception that media boundaries are fluid and recognising the potential for interaction and exchange between the live and the mediated […] intermediality relates to a form of audience reception enabled when a presentation is patterned across various media, creating a multidimensional performance text which comes together in the experience a spectator has of the work (2012:71).
- 8. Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices a)participatory performance & intermediality The audience is changing too: Klich and Scheer define the experience of audience ‘immersion’ as: The audience experience of immersion cuts across all aspects of performance and […] the audience’s level of immersion and their awareness of the process of mediation […of] ‘cognitive immersion’ and ‘sensory immersion’ […and] visceral immersion in multimedia performance is creating new models of reception, embodiment, and contemplation. (2012:73)
- 9. Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices a)participatory performance & intermediality © Lee Heron and Camille Baker July 12, 2015 and Circumference Circus “Shelter Me” © 2015 Tristram Kenton for the Guardian
- 10. Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices b) mobile video art & performance cinema © 2012 Guiliano Chiaradia - 5#CALLS
- 11. Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices c) wearable mobile performance whisper[s] : wearable, handheld, intimate, sensory, personal, expressive, responsive system
- 12. Part II – Mobile Performance: Evolving Practices Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices c) wearable mobile performance © 2013 Ominous Marco Donnarumma
- 13. Part II – Mobile Performance: Evolving Practices Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices c) wearable mobile performance © 2016 - Kasia Molga and Invisible Dust - The Human Sensor
- 14. © 2015 Quasar by FIELD and © 2013-14 The Constitute, EYESECT Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices d) virtual, augmented and mixed reality: new frontiers in MMP
- 15. Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices d) virtual, augmented and mixed reality: new frontiers in MMP © 2016 Trendscendence & Noemi Dumitrescu – Prototype (Phase 1) We Are Now Festival 2016
- 16. Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices d) virtual, augmented and mixed reality: new frontiers in MMP © 2016 Mark Farid - Seeing 1
- 17. Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices d) virtual, augmented and mixed reality: new frontiers in MMP © 2017 NOX: Evidence of Absence by Maskomii
- 18. Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices d) virtual, augmented and mixed reality: new frontiers in MMP © 2017 “Memories of Borderline” by Cyberräuber
- 19. © 2014 Jeanette Ginslov - P(AR)ticipate various locations Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices d) virtual, augmented and mixed reality: new frontiers in MMP
- 20. © 2012 Margarita Benitez and Markus Vogl - S.A.R.A. is an interactive mobile Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices d) virtual, augmented and mixed reality: new frontiers in MMP
- 21. ©2016 Studio for Electronic Theatre - WE Chapter 5: mobile media within evolving performance practices d) virtual, augmented and mixed reality: new frontiers in MMP
- 22. Part II – Mobile Performance: Evolving Practices Chapter 6: mobile performance practice and research a) MINDtouch: ephemeral transference
- 23. Chapter 6: mobile performance practice and research b) Hacking the Body and Hacking the Body 2.0 ©2015 Hacking the Body 2.0 by C Baker & K Sicchio Dancers improvising with DIY wearable sensing devices
- 24. Hacking the Body 2.0 conductive textiles & electronics development 2015 b) Hacking the Body and Hacking the Body 2.0
- 25. © February 2016 Camille Baker and Kate Sicchio - Hacking the Body 2.0 performing “Feel Me” and “Flutter/Stutter” b) Hacking the Body and Hacking the Body 2.0
- 26. Chapter 6: mobile performance practice and research e) WEAR: Wearable technologists Engage with Artists for Responsible innovation @WEARsutain
- 27. Part III – Artist Perspectives Chapter 7: Artist Interviews 1. Atau Tanaka & Adam Parkinson - iPhone 4 Hands: Mobile Musical Interface © 2008-2011 Atau Tanaka and Adam Parkinson - iPhone 4 Hands
- 28. Chapter 7: Artist Interviews 2. Sander Veenhof: Dutch Augmented reality designer / artist © 2017 Sander Veenhof Be Your Own Robot - Hololens augmented reality apps
- 29. Chapter 7: Artist Interviews 3. Eunice Gonçalves Duarte: Performance Artist © 2010 Eunice Duarte – The Study of Quinstina
- 30. Chapter 7: Artist Interviews 4. Eduardo Duda Valle: Sound Artist © 2015 Duda Valle experimance
- 31. Chapter 7: Artist Interviews 5. La Fura del Baus: Immersive Theatre group - Jürgen Müller, cofounder
- 32. Chapter 7: Artist Interviews 6. Dani Ploeger: German Performance Artist and Academic © 2014-16 Dani Ploeger Fetish
- 33. Chapter 7: Artist Interviews 7. Fahrudin Nuno Salihbegovic - Artistic Director, Studio for Electronic Theatre (SET) © 2014 Studio for Electronic Theatre - iPad masks in The Prisoner
- 34. Chapter 7: Artist Interviews 8. Bushra Burge - Artist / Designer in VR and Wearables, London © Bushra Burge 2016 Dark Matter, Dark Energy project
- 35. Chapter 7: Artist Interviews 9. Kim-Leigh Ponton - Australian VR /Mixed Reality Performance designer © 2016 Kim-Leigh Ponton - Human Imagination Task Force: Still from Scene 2c – Oceans Inverted - final RCA project exhibition
Editor's Notes
- Hello I am Camille Baker, originally from Vancouver Canada now living in the UK — big apologies for not presenting in French, while having French Canadian blood and relatives, but I was brought up in English only environments. This talk with be mostly an unveiling and preview of my soon to be published new monograph New Directions in Mobile Media and Performance, by Routledge to be released in February (hopefully). Using mobile devices within digital art and performance was the focus of my PhD and even though I have moved on in my practice since I completed it in 2011, it has had a big role in where I am now, hence this book. Mobile devices used within digital art and performance, in tandem with wearable technologies, have become another medium for artistic expression within live art, dance, immersive theatre, and music, enabling additional discourse on its effects on the morphing landscape of performance.
- I want to start with the story of the book - as my partner suggested: - the book came about after a presentation I did on my PhD in 2012 and was invited to submit a proposal based on it for Ashgate Press. - after a peer review and some back and forth on the organisation of the content, I started writing in 2014 - I was not to cover the territory of earlier edited books like Mobile Audience by Martin Reiser on locative media and audience engagement, or Jason Farham’s books on the embodiment of locative media and narrative space, or the work around mobile cinema and photography covered by Marsha Berry and Max Schleser - all of whom discussed similar territory, but I had to try not to revisit too much of it - originally, it was to cover a broader range of mobile media art work outputs, including mobile film and video art, mobile visual (i.e. painting and photography) and media arts, and was not specifically about mobile performance, but as time went on and I looked at how rapidly mobile was permeating into the art forms and practices I realised I had to cut some practice from my PhD and hone in mainly on performance, and since electronic and computer music is also a huge field and not my area, I chose not to focus too much on it as well. - at the same time, my own practice felt somewhat removed from what I had been focussing on in the PhD and I was not that interested in some of the practices out there that were using mobile devices and had to re-enthuse myself in the topic area or abandon it. Taylor-Francs bought Ashgate and Routledge and Ashgate was closed and all its contracts were assigned to Routeldge, so I had more time to deliver this book while they sorted out the acquisition; and as is often the case with all creative practices, life and work got in the way quite a lot during this process: I got engaged, changed jobs and got my right to remain in the UK in 2014, in 2015 I got married and was promoted into a more challenging role in my new university, in 2016 had a major health scare that had me off work for several months, started a major research project and my father died this year since January and I had to deliver the book this autumn; So writing it was very difficult at times - just finding the brain space to think about some sections more deeply was challenging - and I do wonder how coherent it really is or if all this distraction is evident in it - I hope not. But I did have some external readers to give me feedback on areas toward on, including Gaby David here. as it is my first monograph and it felt like another PhD - I’m hoping that for my next one is not any time soon - and I will make more space for it It was delivered on November 15th finally - a couple months late.
- READ BELOW I’m not going to deep into these chapters as you can read the book when it is out if interested, but I will summarise their contents. These 4 chapters cover the now obvious affordances or ‘side effects’ the mobile phone, but this section is largely adapted and updated from theory in my PhD thesis. It focusses on our dependancy on the mobile and the theory around those affordances in the first 4 chapters. These affordances include: 1) intimacy: of the phone with the body, our own intimacy emotionally with others that it enables, it’s portability and ease of use, its extension of our bodies, and the discreetness it can enable, and other discussions around how we are losing our much needed physical, corporeal forms of intimacy that psychologists and 2) connection: technically connecting us to others but also discussion on emotional connection and other permutations of connections, such as social media, but also covering discussions around telepathy and extended, and how the mobile simulates this more controversial form of connection and intimacy that should be considered and understood more deeply, which I have been interested in since my masters; 3) liveness and presence: covering the theory territory of liveness from the virtual here-and-now, online perspective with for daily interactions led by writings for Don, Idhe, Pierre Lévy and in the performance context reviewing theories of Ausander, Phelan, and others. I also explore presence theories and discuss the ideas of Merleau-Ponty, Kozel, Massumi, Grosz, Richardson, Bultler, and Schneider, in terms of sensations felt in the body and the viscerality of presence whether in-person or virtual, and how we experience connection, but everything is discussed through the lens of mobile performance and network performance and interaction; 4) embodiment of the mobile device: I explore theories of embodiment and define it as the entanglement of mind and body as one encased within the skin and enveloping the bones, blood, brain and other organs, but incorporating a presence of a ‘being’, a ‘spirit’ of consciousness, or ‘soul’ that Varela says is separate from the corporeal, fleshy encasement, but lives within it. It includes the elastic ability to move beyond the boundaries of the skin and enables one to be ‘present’ across distance as Idhe states, being both inside and outside the skin and crossing the boundaries of he senses. I explore how this is supported in virtual instances and how it can be expressed through connection across virtual space and through the device.
- READ ABOVE AND THEN BELOW More theatre and performance practitioners are creating ever-more immersive performance works that incorporate mobile devices as a means to reach new, savvier, and younger audiences, who expect a more wired engagement. The audience’s relationship and involvement with technology has become more relaxed, comfortable, and confident since the release of the iPhone in 2006, enabling more creative ways for the performers, creative directors and audiences to interact with each other. The expectations of the audiences have also changed with the emergence of interactive, remix, mash-up social media culture, further spurring inspiration by creative practitioners. Audience members express themselves and communicate in bolder ways with each new level of immersion, the edgier and more adventurous the participatory or immersive production is, the more the audience wants and demands evermore emotionally powerful and unique experiences.
- So now we move to examples of work showcased in the book: The performance of Circumference Circus’ Shelter Me, which I attended on London in June and July 2015, was a circus/dance work that incorporated the mobile as the interaction tool for the audience. Shelter Me incorporated the audience’s desire to take photos, tweet, and message each other during the performance as part of the piece. Audience members were asked to text a number in order to receive prompts from the performers throughout the show, as well as to give their own number to a “buddy” to interact with during the performance. Before the performance began, the performers led various activities to introduce the audience members to each other were encouraged; these were facilitated hands-on, for pairs or small groups. The activities included drawing on the walls (with prompts), dancing together, singing, paying physical games, doing trust exercises, and drawing selfies on the windows, etc.
- This first sub-section covers early mobile video performance work from 2005-2012, to more current opensource projects. It starts with an exploration of how performative mobile video work evolved. It focuses on video performance (VJing/live cinema/A/V performance, thus it stems from the video art and cinema traditions, and is related to live laptop music performance, the relevance of which will become apparent with the selected works. Here we have a work by video artist Guiliano Chiaradia. in my Interview with Chiaradia he said: I had [been] experimenting with mobile video clips and producing drama, needed a project that was actually [going] a little further and [wanted to] use all the mobile features: SMS script, recording unusual angles and movements, editing on the device itself, as a ringtone wallpaper soundtrack and graphics. […] made in Latin America, 5#CALLS […] gave me this opportunity. All the details of the audiovisual production were designed to exploit the mobile phone. The script was written in SMS […] We used the unusual angles that only a small camera like the phone would be able to do and tied the phones to the bodies of the actresses to record their expressions and gestures. Then, all editing was done using only the features of mobile phone. We needed a soundtrack so the phone’s ringtones were used for this. The phone graphic[s] wallpaper helped to finalise the visual look. (Vague Terrain, 2012: online).
- This sub-section looks at the media tech love affair with wearable technology since 2013, especially within the sports and fitness industries. While not strictly mobile phone or mobile media, wearable technology in performance is a form of mobile technology that is often tethered to or linked to mobile phones, tablet or laptop computers to enable the embedded technology to ‘work’. Yet, as expected, artists and performers have appropriated these technologies and developments to make new expressive modes of performance, and since Susan is here and her theory and practical work is also featured quite strongly in the book, and she has always been a great mentor for me, I need to give a nod her and to how we met and become friends … as my masters supervisor and on the whisper project, which was a collaborative team project led by Kozel and Thecla Schiphorst in Vancouver at Simon Fraser University from 2002-2005 The whisper[s] project’s aim was to find new modes of embodied interaction, communication, exchange, and playful means of incorporating fashion, gesture, movement, media installation, expressive devices, performance and art in new and compelling combinations.
- Marco Donnarumma, uses a custom-made physiological sensor system worn on his arms to create dramatic music and performances. Donnarumma says of the work: “The instrument I created uses *sounds* from within the body: such as muscle sounds, blood flow, and bones crackles. In other words, it amplifies acoustic vibrations of the muscular tissues, not electricity” (2017). The instrument is called XTH Sense, it is open source and used by other artists.
- The health organisation Invisible Dust, along with Manchester, the European City of Science in 2016, commissioned digital artist Kasia Molga to make piece called The Human Sensor, which involved creating eight air quality responsive illuminating costumes that track a person’s exposure to air pollution when moving within the UK’s cities. The Human Sensor investigated the vulnerability of the body when it is exposed to the increasing levels of pollution and pollens in the air, a direct consequence of mass urbanisation, climate change, and decreasing biodiversity. Each performer wore the air-quality sensing costumes and moved through the streets of Manchester, attracting crowds along the way with their stunning live visuals, choreography and soundtrack in the final performance (2016: online) Each costume measured and represented localised fluctuations in air quality through animated illuminations, which were powered through the exhaled breath of each performer.
- This section focussed on the recent and exponential resurgence of Virtual Reality (VR), the evolution of Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) and their use within performance work, employing the latest mobile phone-based (or not) headsets, glasses, hardware and software, to make intimate performance artwork and games. Here some strange and wonderful projects that reconceptualise the VR headset and its sculptural potential, creating speculative design objects that ask the viewer/wearer to question whether these types of prostheses change our conception of VR and if the design changes the experience. Such projects, while not performances themselves, are performative for the wearer, and include works by digital art studio FIELD, who incorporate Oculus Rift VR headsets and a movie such as the Quasar project, which comprises three wearable sculptures with VR experiences, that has the audience, […] dive into a graphical galaxy filled with sound and music–controlled with their arm gestures: from steering through the atmospheric layers of an unknown planet, to another galaxy with stars orbiting around the player, to an entirely abstract space where geometric shapes are deformed, destroyed, and rejoined. (Field, 2015: online) Or the visually captivating headset of the EYESECT project [], which creates a sense of disorientation, which creates a performative experience for the viewer as well as by-standers, or as they explain on the website: EYESECT is a wearable interactive installation that reflects an Out-of-Bodiment in an immersive way. By this it allows users to experience their environments from new points of view. The world, as we perceive in reality and through media is aligned to binocular and stereoscopic vision of human beings. (The Constitute, 2014)
- Trendscendence – Prototype (Phase 1) a VR performance experience, also part of the We Are Now Festival 2016, which I attended, was a: […] the performance is a short, one-on-one experience that uses a virtual reality headset, 360 degree video, autoteatro and physical interaction to explore the mediatization of identity. (We Are Now Festival program, 2016) The program blurb for the piece reads, […] a personalised interactive experience that place you in the future where the line is blurred between your physical body and your online ‘avatar’ […] Prototype(Phase 1) asks you to question how we connect, communicate and what the future might hold.” (We Are Now Festival program, 2016) See more including a video on the project by its creators here http://www.trendscendencelivehere.com/prototype1.html (Accessed May 5, 2017).
- Seeing 1, by performance artist Mark Farid, has been promoted as a piece in which he will live with a VR headset for 28 days. The concept is very captivating, evoking questions such as, “What will happen to his mind if it is disconnected or disassociated from his own eyes and optical sensing systems, since they are our primary interface to engage with the world, along with the other supporting senses and haptic feedback?” The consequences of this type of experience could potentially be very physically and psychologically damaging, and perhaps this is the reason Farid wants to have as much support as he can before undertaking this experiment. The first question about this project, beyond the concept and hype around it on the website [], is whether it will ever actually happen. It seems to have been in the pipeline for over a year. While compelling, over the duration of the writing of this book the date of the performance has been up in the air, and was finally announced after much PR hype and anticipation, to begin on October 4, 2018. Apparently, he has been undergoing psychological preparation, as well as raising the financial support for the medical and psychology team, not to mention the technical support for the duration of the 28 days of the performance.
- Recent additions / discoveries: NOX: Evidence of Absence project by London Soho-based visual collective Maskomi, integrating VR/AR mixed reality participatory engagement into a dance performance. NOX combines an immersive 360-degree experience with live dance inspired by the ideas of Jungian analyst Robert A Johnson “owning ones shadow” where he describes the diverse sides of the personality And what looks like a visually stunning project is Cyberräuber, or theater of virtual reality,, with two works “Memories of Borderline” and “Pitoti Prometheus”, the former of which will open at the Ars Electronica Center for Long Night of the Stages opening on November 11, 2017 at Ars Electronica recently
- And what looks like a visually stunning project is Cyberräuber, or theater of virtual reality,, with two works “Memories of Borderline” and “Pitoti Prometheus”, the former of which will open at the Ars Electronica Center for Long Night of the Stages opening on November 11, 2017 at Ars Electronica recently
- In her P(AR)ticipate project, Jeannette Ginslov - who worked with Susan on AffeXity - uses AR as a form of Screen Dance, on her website she states: P(AR)ticipate: body of experience/body of work/body as archive is an immersive, participatory and live performance installation using AR (Augmented Reality) to access Ginslov's personal and somatic memories of living in Apartheid & Democratic South Africa. P(AR)ticipate uses the AR app, Aurasma, on smart mobile devices, to access haptic and archival videos tagged to images on the walls, the floor and on Ginslov's moving body. The interaction is designed to trigger, perform and archive somatic memory across bodies and networked devices and may trigger the viewer's somatic memories.
- S.A.R.A. – (synesthetic augmented reality application) is an App exploring the potential of using a mobile device as a unique and wearable musical interface. S.A.R.A. was originally developed as a standalone App to translate the surrounding environment into sounds on mobile devices (iPhone and Android) creating a digitally augmented synesthetic experience. The imagery captured via the mobile device’s onboard camera is translated into synesthetic-inspired sounds. In its original development S.A.R.A. has been graciously supported with a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts – New Media Artworks Grant.
- The We Are Now Festival 2016, the program listed WE as an AR performance project, by the Studio for Electronic Theatre as such: WE is a dystopian story set in a future, in which people live their alienated lives in the policed city-state, and is inspired by the Russian science fiction novel WE, written by Yevgeny Zamyatin in 1921, and is the first novel to be banned in the Soviet Russia. Living in beautiful glass houses, but under constant surveillance, the people of WE have strict rules to follow. Using phones and tablets, the audience plays a central role in shaping this brave new world of WE. [] At the time of experiencing WE, Aurasma software was used by the audience to start the video camera to search for “tagged” images to play video sequences, anthem music, using a QR code type trigger. This trigger was used in various parts of the story, or to explain parts of the history within the story world, and the inspiration for the play. The audience instruction of the app and its overall use in the play was quite limited and could have been better employed, but as a beta this can be forgiven, provided the audience feedback was incorporated into the next version, and the overall interactivity is improved. See the project details on the company’s website http://www.setlab.eu (Accessed May 5, 2017).
- MINDtouch was my PhD project through the SMARTlab at the university of East London, sponsored by the BBC R&D, which explored embodied, non-linguistic communication and interaction, using wearable biosensing devices and mobile phones as the ‘interfaces’ to remotely experienced media interaction, within social, performance contexts. The aim was to understand how people might ‘connect to each other’ through technology, in alternate, embodied ways, to create a simulation of a synaesthetic dream exchange. It sought to understand how bodily sensations, perceptions, interactions and responses might be meaningfully utilised to find unique ways to visualise the body/mind activity, and to experience that activity in a collaborative performance environment. Through participation by in-person and remote interactors, creating mobile video streamed mixes, the project sought to interweave and embody a daisy chain of technologies through the network space.
- This section features the ongoing development of the collaborative research project and creative practice, Hacking the Body and Hacking the Body 2.0, with dancer/choreographer/media artist Kate Sicchio. Hacking the Body 2.0 (HTB2.0) has been an ongoing investigation by media artist/choreographer/researcher Kate Sicchio and myself. Conceptually, Hacking the Body started by examining rhetoric on code, hacking, networks, the quantified self of online computing community, and these perspectives on the use of data as helping to define a new approach to examining inner and outer states and sensations of the human body with sensing devices within performance. HTB 2.0 moved onto explore issues of corporate collection or personal data, and sought to take more critical stance in our own research and practice in making bespoke garments and mobile interfaces to control them, to exploring ways in which our data can represent our identity, through performance.
- This is an EU project initiated by me and running now focussed on supporting new projects that are developing Ethical and Sustainable wearable technologies and e-textiles across Europe. We are funding 48 projects at €50K per project
- The idea for this 3rd part and chapter is to focus on a few individuals who form an eclectic sampling of intriguing emerging and known artists. Each speaks about their creative process and why they chose the mobile phone as their creative tool for and in performance, as well as how they integrate it within the performance staging or final work. Gestural musical expression and performance are not new per se, and Tanaka has been exploring this type of haptic and gestural interaction for musical performance since he worked for the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Japan in the early 2000s, and more recently with former student now colleague, Adam Parkinson. Both musical innovators have employed mobile phones as sensors, to map sounds onto the gestures and movements they used in their collaborative project iPhone 4 Hands I first saw Atau Tanaka perform at the Intimacy: Across Visceral and Digital Performance Festival, at Goldsmiths, University of London in London December 2007, I was struck by the visceral nature of Tanaka’s performance that could not only be felt through the sound but also empathically through his gestures. He also worked
- creating app-based experiences and narratives for people to perform with their smartphone.
- an independent theatre Portuguese artist using mobile devices in very creative and empowering (for the audience) ways. Her work Xistórias – Digital Performance in the Xisto [Schist] Villages, a site-specific performance for a whole community
- Brazilian sound artist working with the concept of “experimance” developed by Eero Tapio Vuori between an experiment and a performance; for his work the mobile phone is a fundamental part of it. In one project he makes the Wi-Fi photography with the Kirlian device, which is essential to capture the radiation and in conjunction with an app of slow shutter photography, he establishes a near field communication and through that Wi-Fi photography In his vibrational paintings, mobile phones are used as a primary source of sound waves, that can came by an oscillator app, radio waves, music and sounds chosen or made by the participant. So he and the participants are co-creating the piece using the affordances of the mobile.
- In order to experience the new model of digital democracy, La Fura dels Baus created the theatrical performance of a true SmartCity. M.U.R.S. challenges the audience through this installation/performance art piece on the cities of the future. Attendees must bring a smartphone to interact with the space through a bespoke augmented-reality mobile application designed for the piece.
- Dani Ploeger combines performance art and emerging technologies, often with a narcissistic, transgressive or sexual theme. His work stands apart by using mobile devices in or as performance. He is now working on a part performance part political research project on e-waste called, BODIES OF PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE digital performance and the global politics of electronic waste.
- Nuno Sal-lil-bee-go-vic Mentioned earlier I saw his piece WE by the Studio for Electronic Theatre (SET) in May 2016 at the We Are Now Festival at the Roundhouse Arts Centre in London ), one of many theatre works that integrate mobile devices into their performance works.
- Combination VR and wearable technology project is Dark Matter, Dark Energy, which is the intriguing work of Bushra Burge. This work is exploring the full haptic and immerse potential of the technologies, still presently using a mobile phone in its custom headset, proving that the phone is still a part of the equation, at least for new and emerging designers. With combined sensory triggers and interactivity within storytelling; alongside relevant possibly theatrical aesthetics, with a full science fiction story made with wearable haptics and conductive materials.
- Her project was one that explored the mind, questioning reality and the perception of it, engaging the viewer to move between VR, AR and live performance and try to distinguish between them while following a narrative. It was about trying to find a fictional sibling who may or may be in the present reality or in an alternate reality, or moving between the two. It featured a lovely mix of 360 video, hand-drawn scenes and live actors engaging with the audience in real-time.