Ragtime : Computer simulation

An endless computer simulation which uses a procedural type of animation known as 'rag doll’. In standard First Person Shooter(FPS) games such as ‘Call of Duty’ rag doll animations replace otherwise canned ‘static’ animations to give endless variety. Motion of the figure is replaced by a physics simulation which can react when subjected to force. In this piece the motion capture avatar is subjected to endless unseen forces to create a sympathetic kinaesthetic response in the viewer.

Ragtime was included in the POLITICS OF AMNESIA II exhibition at Cafe Gallery Projects.
‘The exhibition looks at past trauma through the conduit of technology, itself now presented as implicated in that very trauma it is representing. The artists consider the psyche of the body politic revealing a condition of disquiet and concern through an interest in, or reference to that technology. Like Walter Benjamin's angel, these artists look to the future by facing the past, witnessing "the storm we call progress" through a medium insistent on recycling of the present.’

Research aims:
-Generate the potential for kinaesthetic responses to visual information.
-Apply improvisational structures of performance to simulation coding.
-Challenge ideas of dance performance and display in a different format through the lens of technology in combination with visual art.
-Construct different modalities of performance.
-Foreground simulacral nature of the experience.

Each iteration of the MAN A series is responsive to site, highlighting novel audience engagement with dance improvisations, animations revealed by direct relations of subject to objects, sculptures, wall prints and installations of differing scales.