Abstract:
REVOLVE is a real-time interactive performance that sheds light on the ‘stuff’ dreams are made of, the night-stories and bodily states that shape our sleeping hours. As an arts-science collaboration, the research imperative was to translate the data of a sleep scientist into sonic and choreographic content through wearable technologies. The work invites audiences to experience a series of states enfolding voice, sound, light, video and dance, as she metaphorically traces the path of the sleeper’s mind and body from dusk to dawn. Driven by a curiosity about the body, its rhythms and potential for change, the work alludes to the planetary, physiological and personal cycles that round our lives. In doing so, it explores how the non-literalness of scientific phenomena (data from EEG readings of brain waves) can be mapped through interactive performance and made meaningful as a series of performative states for audiences. The performance ecology enfolds wearable electronic sensor technology, video, lighting, text, recorded sound and an interactive sound environment within a choreographic score. Sensing the body, its gestures and its environment through the measurement of light, tilt and acceleration, Carol Brown wears a “sensor suit” that allows her to intuitively control and interact with a malleable sound environment. She can respond to this environment by choosing to expose or hide light-sensitive parts of her body and combining these actions with movements of varied speed. In turn, the sonic feedback influences the emerging choreographic score, inducing constraints and generative cyclic patterns for movement. The dramaturgy is driven by concepts based on the physiological cycles that underlie sleeping and waking, which are in turn shaped by our circadian biological clock that keeps our sleep/wake cycle coordinated with the rotation of the earth. REVOLVE includes scenes that are inspired by states such as light sleep – delving in and out of wakefulness; deep sleep – a state in which the brain’s neuronal activity synchs up to create very slow and large brainwaves; and REM sleep – a state characterised by nervous muscle twitches and rapid eye movements that come from an active, but sleeping brain. At the end of the performance there is a metaphorical breech into waking consciousness as the brain re-engages with the external world through purposeful and directed movement. The sound design is partially composed, and partially interactive. The composed sounds are sourced from EEG brainwaves, recordings of a sleeping child and the voice of tenor Keith Lewis. The interactive sounds are based on the auditory beat, a phenomenon that arises when two pure tones of different, but neighbouring frequencies are played together. In such a situation, a beat frequency emerges, perceived as a periodic pulsing of the sound. These beats – waves of sound - are powerful to listen to, physically moving, subsonic but clearly perceivable.
Description:
Co-conceived by Carol Brown and Anne Niemetz; dancing, choreography, spoken text and performance elements authored by Carol Brown; Anne Niemetz designed the wearable technology, interface system and filmed and edited the video compoent; Russell Scoones developed the recorded soundscape; Philippa Gander contributed expertise as a sleep scientist and co-researcher in the developmental stages of the project dramaturgy; Margie Medlin was responsible for the overall lighting design and related performance elements; additional contributors included Fiona Graham and Alys Longley who contributed to the development of the performance texts.