The Brain Stripped Bare - 2002
PERFORMANCE / INSTALLATION — DURATION: 45:00
This work considers a future where we live simultaneously in multiple realities, where the boundaries between physical and virtual reality are blurred and thoughts are expressed telepathically.
Advanced technology can provide an enhanced life experience but with this comes sophisticated forms of surveillance that track our behaviors, our movements and our identity. Technology can strip away our layers of privacy.
In this performance both the body and the mind are exposed. Unlike traditional theater that separates the audience from the performers, the performers surround and infiltrate the audience.
Surrounded by a circle of screens the audience is free to shift their point of view. Live performers merge with shadows, projected images and sounds, revealing stark human forms that move in startling and perplexing ways. This creates a raw, very physical yet illusory interactive experience that connects an audience to a performance in a way not previously explored.
Installation / Performance Description
An audience enters a circular space approximately 10.5 meters (35 ft) in diameter. Five large projection screens surround them. Two nude performers, a man and woman, appear in various forms; as shadows behind the screens, as live performers moving throughout the audience and as projected images that circle and surround the audience.
At first the human forms, seen as shadows and projected images, have an ephemeral, ethereal quality. But when the performers appear in the audience one is startled by their intense physical presence.
Five synchronized DVD players project a 360 degree panoramic image that surrounds the audience. Sound is heard from four speakers positioned around the outside of the circular set.
An Audio Spotlight, an invention that can send a very narrow beam of sound over long distances, is positioned discreetly in the darkness above the set. At one point, while the performers hang above the heads of the audience, the sounds of their breathing and movement are beamed from the Audio Spotlight and directed at individuals in the audience. When a sound beam is directed at a person it seems to be very intimate as if it is in your ear. This creates a sense of remote presence; a feeling of being at an intimate proximity to the performers.
At another point a female performer enters and slowly walks through the audience, looking into the eyes of individuals at close range. As she approaches an audience member he or she will hear a whispering voice. The voice feels intimate and, in fact, is not heard by other audience members. The Audio Spotlight tracks the performer as she moves from person to person. When she is close, looking into a personís eyes, it seems as if that person is hearing her thoughts, reading her mind.
Through their movements the performers tell an evolutionary story of the movement of life. We see a transition from the life form that slithers on the ground to one that is upright and ìintelligentî, to a form of life that is transcendent and invisible.