DeviceD is a dancer-activated audio-visual installation informed by social media interactions, their influence on users, and the relationship between private and public identity. Comprised of wireless motion sensors and a wearable tactile feedback system, the dancer acts as the intermediary force, receiving social media posts as somatosensory stimuli, and transmits gestural data generating and manipulating the sonic and visual material.

Four fences demark an area signifying the user’s private domain, detached from what is expressed with every tweet, Instagram post, or Facebook update, with the digitally generated sounds and visuals emanating from within the private towards the observing public. Entering the private, the dancer performs an improvisatory choreography inspired by the surrounding sound and visuals, with the option of manipulating the emanating material through four handheld motion sensors. The audio-visual system constantly listens for specific mentions, hashtags, and search queries, arranged over four categories. Positive results for each category trigger new audio-visual events, as well as generating a pattern of tactile feedback on the wearable sensors attached on each limb of the dancer. Each pattern relates to a predetermined choreographic sequence, which the dancer identifies and performs until the end the somatosensory stimuli, before returning to improvisation.

Team: collaboration between Dr Manoli Moriaty and Dr Lucie Sykes

Images: Photo credit Nick Harrison