Evolution

BACKGROUND. In the original dance production (not previously reported for ERA), I collaborated with choreographer Garry Stewart, Canadian roboticist Louis-Philippe Demers, UK video artist Gina Czarnecki and London based costume designer Georg Meyer-Wiel to create a startling and unique world. Situating humans in communion with 30 robotic machines and prosthetics, Devolution explored the relationship between robotic and human performers within an artificial ecosystem. Imbued with ritualised process Devolution explored mutualism, territoriality, parasitism, predation, symbiosis and senescence to suggest that in the midst of technology we remain subject to the instincts of the flesh. SIGNIFICANCE: Ruby award winner for innovation, Helpman award for Best new work.Most popular Australian Dance Theatre show. Sellout Adelaide Festival & Sydney Festival seasons. CONTRIBUTION. Melbourne Now provided an opportunity to recontextualise a fromerly multisensory context for composition into an audio only experience. By removing the extrinsic logic (dance, robots, light) which peviously informed the composition the music inhabits a stranger, more seductive, yet confronting world. This installation allowed me to build on research I was undertaking in the Audokinetic experiments lab - namely, How is sound experienced as part of a knot of a multimodal event, and how might it be perceived when the structures which had previously given it context and logic are removed? Results saw the decontextualised experience become richer (through imagination) whilst stranger (in the absence of extrinsic logic).