[spectre] Global Choreography / Sunday Oct 7th 2012

[Sander Veenhof]

GLOBAL CHOREOGRAPHY | October 7th 2012

A distributed flashmob - “Dance alone, together”

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Whether you are in Australia, Asia, Europe or the Americas, anyone in
the (connected) world is invited to join a globally performed
synchronous dance on October 7th. A new genre of collective
experience, now possible thanks to mobile technology and augmented
realty: a distributed flashmob, "dancing alone together”. Standing
where you are and pointing your phone around you following a virtual
cube floating around your head, someone some where else in the world
will do the exact same thing, at the exact same time.

With the rapid growth of the use of mobile pocketsize digital
technology, our environment of today consists of more than just
physical tangible material. There’s a data-reality invisibly
surrounding us with virtual games to be played, stories to be
experienced, treasures to be searched for. Using augmented reality
viewers people are uncovering virtual manifestations around them,
appearing on the live camera view of their mobile phone.

While doing so, they make quirky movements, waving their smartphones
in the air in search of virtual content. These moves resemble an
improvisational choreography. It triggered Dutch new media artist
Sander Veenhof to turn the phenomenon into a a choreography in
cooperation with choreographer Marjolein Vogels. A global
choreographer, an appropriate format for the "AR" domain in which it
is taking place.

The virtual 'guidance cube' can be viewed using the app Layar. While
keeping ones’ feet at the indicated position, the cube instructs a
person to hold the phone with specific hands while following the moves
of the cube. The moves are initiated in a synchronised way across the
globe because the system is controlled from one central source.

The current choreography consists of 34 moves, designed specifically
for persons holding up a smartphone in either one or both hands. The
series of movements of the cube, moving back and forth, from left to
right, up and down, from closeby to far away, are chosen in such a way
that the movements of the hand(s) and thereby the body becomes a
structured dance.

The launch of the Global Choreography will be presented at the Tempo
Festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, but can be joined from anywhere in
the world using the right app.

More details here: http://globalchoreography.info

ARTISTS

Sander Veenhof studied “unstable media” at the DOGtime department of
the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Being an adept of digital
and virtual realities and fascinated by the intrinsic lack of
impossibilities of these domains, Veenhof now pursues his fascination
throughout the physical realm thanks to Augmented Reality which has
turned the world into a programmable environment. With his creations
for our geographically-connected data-reality, he explores the
practical and conceptual opportunities for artistic expression within
the new hybrid semi-digital space. He is joined in these efforts by
the Augmented Reality artist collective Manifest.AR, which he co-
founded after the full-scale uninvited AR exhibition at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York he organized with fellow members of the group.

Marjolein Vogels works as a performer with NB projects, Jack Gallagher
en Jennifer Tee. Besides this, she creates her own choreographies
which are presented at various theatre festivals, performed by the
collective The Magic Life Club. She is the organiser and curater of
the yearly WhyNot festival.

JOIN

Charge your batteries, download the app and join on Sunday 7th of October!

14H PDT, 17 EDT, 18H BRT, 21 GMT, 23H CEST

http://globalchoreography.info