[-empyre-] Mixed Relations - Queer Relational Performance

[dj lotu5]

I want to share with you all the project I'm currently working on, part 
of which we just posted online. Mixed Relations (tentatively titled) is 
a project by myself and Elle Mehrmand where we are using technology to 
explore relationality, asking how mixed reality technologies can change 
our relations to each other and show us something new about our 
relationships with each other and with technology. We hope to explore 
the body as an instrument for making live audio and as a site of 
exploration. This is not a party, but I would say it is queer...

In Mixed Relations, we are not seeking to engineer relationships between 
spectators, but rather, using technologies such as open hardware diy 
electronics, virtual worlds and puredata to explore our own relations.

For Mixed Relations, we are engaging in a series of studies, developing 
technology and looking at micro-questions within the larger process of 
thining. One such study is looking at pain-sharing, co-mpassion and 
electronic prosthesis through a performance called Slapshock. You can 
see the video here:

http://vimeo.com/5532433


In the performance, we used a Freeduino, an Arduino, a Piezo sensor and 
a Transdermal Electro Nerve Stimulation (TENS) unit, the kind used for 
medical treatment as well as electrostim fetishes, to achieve a system 
where when I slap myself, the other performer, my partner Elle, feels a 
painful shock. When she slaps herself I feel a painful shock as well. I 
think this helps to enact some of what Virginia refers to as "aesthetics 
as an operation, as a mode of engagement that takes up a different kind 
of logic, a different kind of sense-making". Our goal here is to look 
closely at relationality, between ourselves and technology, thinking of 
symbiotic relations, intersubjective becoming, erotic relations and 
love, looking at them in close detail, through the help of durational 
performance and DIY open hardware hacking.

Virginia's post which states "a hermeneutic of love, in which love 
functioned not as that affect that I feel for you that makes me my most 
realized self, but as that affect which breaks down precisely that 
understanding of the subject" is very closely linked to this project, in 
that we are attempting to explore how "we" are changed in and by 
relationality and technology and how looking closely at these relations 
can deepen our questions of what each of us are individually and together...

I would love to know what others think of this project in relationship 
to the discussion...

More about the project is below:

*Project Description*

/“The partners do not precede their relating: all that is, is the fruit 
of becoming with.”/
-Donna Haraway, When Species Meet

mixed relations is a collaboration between Elle Mehrmand and Micha 
Cárdenas consisting of a series of performances that explore the 
relations between bodies and technology within mixed realities. The 
performances will focus on using the body as an instrument and as a site 
of exploration for performance in mixed realities. The goal is to look 
at bodies in relation to each other in these realities, as well as in 
relation to their instruments and to the technologies which extend and 
multiply them, sonically, visually and physically.

The project will involve two people performing in actual and virtual 
space. It will include explorations of a number of technologies which 
bring the body into mixed realities, outside of its daily boundaries, 
beyond the skin. Live audio synthesis will be achieved using Max/MSP to 
respond to body movements. These movements will be detected through 
various technologies including marker based motion capture, flex 
sensors, pressure sensors, light sensors, accelerometers and the 
Nintendo Wii. The performers’ body movements will be mirrored and 
extended into online 3D networked environments such as Second Life and 
Opensim, which will be projected into the physical performance space. 
Simultaneously, live realtime video will be streamed into the virtual 
performance space, from cameras that are attached to the performers’ 
bodies. Scaled projections, scale models in virtual space and the 
projection of virtual instruments onto actual objects will be used to 
create a mixing of the actual and virtual, blurring the lines between 
the two.

The performances will explore themes of affective tension and 
anticipation, techno-fetishism, and D.I.Y. cyborg bodies. Our main 
inspirations come from the history and traditions of performance art, 
such as Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Stelarc and Orlan, so we see art 
concerned primarily with bodies in relation, and the body and technology 
as the main works we are in conversation with.

While much performance art has looked at relations between people, or 
has engaged with motion capture technologies, mixed relations seeks to 
combine the rapidly spreading cultural phenomenon of embodied 
interfaces, exemplified in the Nintendo Wii, with live collaborative 
improvisational performance. Through the usage of networked online 
environments, the bodies of the performers are multiplied and folded, 
immersed in multiple locations and realities at once, creating another 
layer of relation. The mixing of realities in this project can be seen 
as paralleling or exploring of our own personal experiences of queer 
mixing of genders and sexualities, queering new media.

Virtual worlds such as Second Life are facilitating the development of 
new identities and genders, which – as of yet – allow for unimagined 
relations and relationships. Through the use of mixed reality 
technologies in performance, mixed relations seeks to look closely at 
these new relationships and how they affect our everyday lives and our 
horizons of possibility.



http://transreal.org/2009/05/01/mixed-relations-won-the-ucira-emerging-fields-award/