Uncanny Feedback

Combining dance with digital and sound art, the performances of Simon Biggs, Sue Hawksley, and Garth Paine produce uncanny effects at the interface of the movement of the performer’s body with the software and technological apparatus that track, map, and interact with it. In Bodytext, Crosstalk, Blowup and Dark Matter the uncanny is neither presented as a questioning of subjectivity nor does it emerge from the viewer’s experience of the artwork, but is rather created within the artwork itself, from the feedback among its different interacting elements. “Uncanny Feedback” examines how interactivity between humans and digital media generates uncanny events. Interactivity is not simply a play of surface effects but a complex interactive performance that explores the inter-relationships between kinesthetic experiences and memory, muscle memory and intentional movement, and dance as an imagined movement, a form of interaction, gesture and response to voice recognition, sonification and audio programming.