Heart Station
Luscious Apparatus is interdisciplinary research into body-focused interactions, audience experience, wearable sensing technologies and Bodyweather performance methodology. The research questions are concerned with understanding and crafting audience experience of body-focused interactions in an interactive or live art context. In this particular project, the Bodyweather performance methodology is the prime method for understanding the body in its performative and experiential modes. We have been investigating the use of wearable sensors, such as the Arduino family of motion/tilt sensors and breath and pulse sensors for reading biodata.
Breath Station
Spine Station
Recall Station
At the second residency, we constructed a prototype live art installation, Speechless, around the concept of a series of experiential ‘stations’, each one offering a different body experience, coloured by the use of material objects, masks/costumes, vocal instructions and digitally generated sound. The soundscape was responsive to the biodata measured from breath and pulse sensors. The idea of ritual interactions to structure the work led to the development of a script for running the live encounter. The co-presence of artists and audience within the work itself became a fundamental feature. We “tested” the work with selected participants, in order to gain insight into the audience experience and gauge the viability of the current form of the prototype environment.
The Lung Station was further developed into a piece, The Breath Temple, for the SEAM11 Symposium, Critical Path Choreographic Research Centre, 17/18th September, 2011. Again the ritualistic nature of the work was emphasised through the addition of a ceremonial-like robe which was placed upon the audience participant. We invited participants to reflect upon their experience immediately after by indicating on a site map and body silhouettes where their sense of embodied imagination was located.
Breath Temple
Participant experience recorded on body-site maps
Watch a short video of the project
Artistic team: Lian Loke, Director, Tess de Quincey, Bodyweather practitioner/choreographer (http://www.bodyweather.net/), Dr George Khut, new media artist and researcher, Justin Shoulder, artist and costume-maker and Baki Kocaballi, research assistant.
Funded by the Australia Council for the Arts, Inter-Arts Office, 2010-2011. Supported by the UTS research centre for Human-Centred Technology Design, with residencies at Critical Path Choreographic Research Centre and Medium, Rare Gallery+Studio.
Video by Nathan Babet. Photographic documentation by Alex Davies and Kerri Ambler.