P(AR)ticipate - Ginslov's AR and Screendance Residency, Workshops & Performance - Lake Studios Berlin

[Jeannette Ginslov]

Lake Studios Berlin: 6 week Dance-tech AIR Residency

Jeannette Ginslov

16 July - 30 August 2014

For six weeks Danish/South African dance on film specialist, for screen, AR and the internet, Jeannette Ginslov, will research and explore the notion of: P(AR)ticipate: a body of experience/a body of work. Ginslov will research the connections between her past and present, the 'real' and the remembered, the virtual and the archived and how it may be accessed by screendance, the internet and the augmented reality app Aurasma.

The research will culminate in a live solo performance that asks the viewer to participate with their smart mobile devices to uncover the layers of archived video material, personal stories and political memory. In addition the viewer will experience empathic responses in the exploration of these narratives, and at the same time reveal the instability of personal memory, its state of flux and temporality. Ginslov's research asks and tests how memory is stored in the body and how it may be retrieved by new media tools and audience engagement.

The performance, 30 August, invites the audience to P(AR)ticipate virtually in Jeannette Ginslov's personal memories of living in an Apartheid and Democratic South Africa, the POV of the "other-other", as well as documentary footage of her dance archive, that begins 1998 and is still ongoing, by using the AR app Aurasma on your smart mobile device.

The app is triggered by markers tagged on Ginslov's moving body and as you scan your device very close to the markers on her body, you and the dancer connect, pause or move slowly together, as the video plays. There could up to 5 viewers doing so at once thereby allowing the viewer to become part of the choreography and performance of memory, presence and porous materialities.

In this way the work is a dialogue, a contact mediation, where both dancer and viewer are aware of the connection point and its ephemerality. The work emphasizes time, history, real, virtual and digital materiality as well as memory that is contained in certain parts of the body. It is immersive and disrupts usual performance-audience dynamics.The tags are like wormholes used to uncover memories and experiences stored in the body and so the the performative work becomes a "visceral seepage", oozing from the dancer's body and rendered into haptic, empathic and visceral connections between dance and viewer.

Ginslov will also run three workshops leading up to this performance: 

Screendance Workshop 01 23 August  10h to 18h

Dance and Choreography for Camera/Dance with for by Camera

Screendance Workshop 02  24 August -  10h to 18h 

60seconds dance films - shoot, edit & upload, for screen and internet

Screendance & AR Workshop  30  August 10h to 18h

Create a screendance AR journey of choreographies

Workshop Requirements: Small video handy-cam or phone with a camera and a laptop with editing software if possible.  

For the Performance and Workshop you will need to download Aurasma onto your Android or Apple device from the App Store. Once downloaded you can search for the P(AR)ticipate Channel and follow it. For more details see Aurasma: http://www.aurasma.com/ . You will be assisted at the performance in doing this and will be able to use an iOS device if you do not have one.

Cost per Workshop: €60 Additional Workshop: €50

Lake Studios Berlin, Scharnweberstrasse 27

12587, Berlin – Friedrichshagen

T: +49 (0) 30 – 9900 – 9814

E: [e-mail]

Visit Jeannette Ginslov's Website for her portfolio of work

[Jeannette Ginslov]

P(AR)ticipate: body of experience | body of work | body as archive
World Premiere Lake Studios Berlin 30 Aug 2014
Concept, Performance and interaction design by Jeannette Ginslov
Created during a six week dance-tech AIR Residency at Lake Studios Berlin.

P(AR)ticipate: body of experience/body of work/body as archive is an immersive, participatory and live performance installation using AR (Augmented Reality) to access Ginslov's personal and somatic memories of living in Apartheid & Democratic South Africa. P(AR)ticipate uses the AR app, Aurasma, on smart mobile devices, to access haptic and archival videos tagged to images on the walls, the floor and on Ginslov's moving body. The interaction is designed to trigger, perform and archive somatic memory across bodies and networked devices and may trigger the viewer's somatic memories. 

Since 2010, Ginslov in collaboration with Susan Kozel, has explored affect and a-fixity in the interdisciplinary Screendance & AR project AffeXity.AffeXity researches the use of AR to capture and share affect using screendance shot in cityscapes. P(AR)ticipate extends this research and explores the notion that the body is a site of somatic memory, archiving and a site of non linear story telling. Somatic archiving, retrieval and the sharing of memories co-mingle with the social and cultural and create "messy exchanges between dynamic bodies, technological objects and mobile networks." (Kozel 2013). These encounters become platforms "for the transmission of affect (and somatic memories) across bodies that themselves exist across layers of mediatization". (ibid). 

This may shape choreographic formations that have not yet been explored and “is a specialised and evolving form - where the choreographic language is interrogated not for form or content sake, but in response to the changing stimuli and physical liberties of the technology itself." (Laura Kriefman from Guerilla Dance Project 2014) The role of dancer, choreographer, story teller and viewer become inter-changeable and mutable. These experiential encounters consequentially liberate the choreographic language from more traditional vocabularies, narratives and settings.

Videos are triggered by the audience holding their device over the tagged images:

Link 10 Haptic Videos triggered by Ginslov's personal somatic hieroglyphs (Borrowed from Nancy Stark Smith's Underscores)
Camera & edit: Jeannette Ginslov, 2nd Camera: Marcela Gietsche. Location: Lake Studios Berlin
Link 10 Archive Videos triggered by images of Ginslov's live dance and screendance works
Camera: Jeannette Ginslov, Donald Tolmie & Vilte Vaitkute 
Edit: Jeannette Ginslov, Location: South Africa & Dundee Scotland

Other Performances: Dance Base Edinburgh Scotland
14 Feb 2015 for the Senses Showcase

Hannah Maclure Centre Dundee Scotland

16 March - 10 April 2015 As part of the decoding space exhibition 
02 April 2015 Live performance with Screendance and AR Workshop: 18-21:00 

Hannah Maclure Centre Dundee Scotland

16 March - 10 April 2015 As part of the decoding space exhibition 
02 April 2015 Live performance with Screendance and AR Workshop: 18-21:00 

Performance and technology have been defining and re-defining their relationship for the last 25 years. Artists, performers and technologists have experimented with hardware, software, movement, virtual and physical space, revealing what many regard as a fairly new field of artistic practice, Digital Performance. Decoding Space samples a selection of ground-breaking, experimental and playful projects to encourage exploration of the current research and practice within the field of performance and technology. From pervasive gaming, augmented reality, narrative and abstract animation, ubiquitous computing and computer human interaction, Decoding Space peers into the vast landscape of Digital Performance. Featuring Blast Theory, Quartic Llama, PlayDead, Jeannette Ginslov Lynn Parker and Corinne Jola.

Audience feedback
Tom deMajo Director Creator of the AR project Other by Quartic Llama "I really like your approach to using AR. You avoid the pitfall of technological novelty, and the multi layered approach to your work hijacks AR tech and takes it into meaningful space." 
Corinne Jola Lecturer Psychology Abertay University. "I think the multiple layers in your work are strong – that it is an archive of text, images, and video."
Pernille Spence Lecturer DJCAD University of Dundee & Performance Artist in Dundee. "You avoid technological novelty but have developed a beautifully creative way for people to interact with technology, story and physical experience."