SPINNING SKINS, 2022

The artist’s head is partially scanned and animated. We can now instantly produce hyper- real skins. The two out of sync rotating skins uncannily flip between convex and concave views. Much of our communication and collaboration now occurs remotely, interfacing with screens. Skins now become screens. We now simultaneously function as physical bodies offline and Phantom Flesh online. Phantom Flesh proliferates- phantom not as phantasmatic but rather as a phantom limb. There is an increasingly potent sense of human presence projected online. We now perform best as our avatars. The body is now in excess of its biology possessing and being possessed by mechanic, computational and virtual surrogates.

VIDEO COMPILATION

These performances expose the problematics of what it means to be a body and what it means to be human and what generates our sense of self in a highly mediated machine and computational terrain that we now inhabit. These performances interrogate issues of embodiment, agency and identity.

PROPEL, 2015 : The body is attached to the end of an industrial robot arm. Its trajectory, velocity and position-orientation can be precisely programmed.

RE-WIRED / RE-MIXED, 2016: For 5 days, 6 hours each day the body can only see with the eyes of someone in London, hear with the ears of someone in NY. But anyone, anywhere can access the artist’s right arm and remotely choreograph it.

STICKMAN / MINISTICKMAN, 2018: A minimal but full-body exoskeleton algorithmically actuates the body in a 5 hour performance. Visitors can insert their choreography by bending the limbs of the miniStickMan.

RECLINING STICKMAN, 2020: A 5 hour performance where the body is positioned on the torso of a 9m long, 4m high stick figure robot, actuated by pneumatic rubber muscles. Anyone, anywhere can access the robot remotely and animate it.